COPYRIGHT,    1903,   BY 
THE  CHAUTAUQUA  PRESS. 

COPYRIGHT,  1904,  BY 
LOTHROP  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 


CONTENTS 


PAGB 

INTRODUCTION ..v 

CHAPTER 

I.    THE  EARLIER  PERIOD.       ....  j 

X II.    IRVING  •       •......  I2 

vIII.    COOPER .2 

POE 66 

V.    HAWTHORNE 9g 

VI.     EMERSON j,* 

VII.    BRYANT l64 

VIII.    LONGFELLOW jg^ 

IX.    HOLMES 


204 

X.    WHITTIER 22I 

XL    LOWELL        ••••..  241 

XII.    WHITMAN 264 

XIII.  LANIER.       [. 2g6 

XIV.  THE  PRESENT  DAY      ......  310 


iii 


37237;* 


INTRODUCTION 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

THE  literature  of  a  country  is  made  up  of  the  writings 
of  those  who  have  had  the  gift  and  skill  to  express  them 
selves  in  such  a  way  as  to  move  and  charm  their  readers. 
To  be  literature,  in  the  best  sense,  a  piece  of  writing, 
whether  prose  or  verse,  must  have  beauty  of  expression 
and  inherent  worthiness  of  thought.  While  we  cannot 
deny  the  name  "literature"  to  some  writing  which  has 
attraction  of  form,  without  importance  of  thought  and 
ennobling  emotions,  we  can  affirm  that  the  truly  great 
literature,  that  which  is  likely  to  have  permanence,  will 
show  artistic  quality  along  with  intellectual  and  moral 
significance. 

Moreover,  the  literature  of  a  country,  to  be  really  repre 
sentative,  must  reflect  the  life  of  the  people,  external  and 
internal ;  it  must  stand  for  its  political,  social,  and  ethical 
ideals.  It  must,  in  a  word,  be  the  natural  outcome  of  its 
national  life.  American  literature,  therefore,  embraces 
all  the  writings  which,  on  the  one  hand,  are  possessed  of 
beauty  of  form  and  value  as  thought,  and  also  reflect  with 
some  measure  of  truth  the  national  existence.  Our  Ameri 
can  literature  is  valuable  to  the  young  student  and  future 
citizen  of  the  Republic  just  in  proportion  as  it  seems  to 
mirror  our  American  ideals  and  as  it  shall  have  a  ten 
dency  to  build  up  the  reader  into  a  worthy  citizenship. 


flr" 


vi  Introduction 

The  typical  literature  of  a  land,  in  addition  to  satisfying 
the  instinct  for  beauty  and  stimulating  the  mind  by  imagi 
native  creations,  should  thus  teach  patriotism  and  train 
character.  Whatever  the  esthetic  value  of  our  native 
literature,  it  has  always  in  its  best  examples  performed 
this  service. 

In  writing  a  comprehensive  history  of  American  litera 
ture,  it  is  customary  to  begin  with  Captain  John  Smith, 
an  adventurous  sixteenth-century  Englishman,  and  then 
to  study  the  writings  of  all  the  men  who  left  work  of  any 
importance  in  the  development  of  the  life  upon  the  native 
shores.  This  method  implies  a  mingling  of  historical  and 
literary  interest,  since  many  of  these  early  writers  did  not 
make  great  literature ;  indeed,  hardly  made  literature  at 
all.  Just  here  it  would  be  well  to  make  a  distinction, 
the  misunderstanding  of  which,  I  believe,  often  confuses 
the  student.  A  given  author  may  be  of  considerable  sig 
nificance  in  the  development  of  the  national  literature, 
because,  seen  in  the  setting  of  his  time,  he  had  more 
importance  than  any  contemporary,  or  because  from 
him  has  come  an  important  evolution.  Yet  he  may  be 
by  no  means  a  writer  of  the  first  rank,  or  even  of  the 
second  class,  judged  by  comparative  tests.  In  short,  his 
importance  is  historical  and  relative.  Often,  in  text-books, 
he  is  made  to  loom  up  so  large  that  the  student  is  puzzled 
as  to  his  real  standing.  In  the  present  book,  devoted  in 
the  main  to  the  dominant  figures  of  our  literature,  those 
of  first  importance,  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  dwell  long 
on  those  of  lesser  note.  The  high  lights  only  will  be 
emphasized.  To  get  a  bird's-eye  view,  this  is  necessary ; 
otherwise,  one  fails  to  see  the  forest  for  the  leaves.  In 
the  short  introductory  chapter  which  follows,  the  earlier 
periods  are  summarized.  Then  the  chief  business  of  the 


Introduction  vii 

book  is  taken  up ;  namely,  a  setting  forth  of  the  dozen  or 
more  great  writers  who  have  made  our  literature  widely 
known.  Then,  finally,  follows  a  brief  survey  of  contem 
porary  conditions,  in  which  the  present  state  of  national 
letters  is  considered. 

But,  first,  a  question :  Have  we  an  American  literature 
at  all  ?  More  than  one  critic  of  standing  have  taken  the 
ground  that  strictly  we  have  not.  The  meaning  back  of 
the  assertion  is  that,  broadly  viewed,  American  literature 
is  simply  British  literature  upon  American  soil,  a  variant, 
not  an  independent  production.  American  literature  looks 
to  the  same  great  past,  expresses  itself  in  the  same  tongue. 
There  is  not  the  difference,  for  example,  between  English 
and  American  literature  that  exists  between  that  of  any 
two  of  the  so-called  Romance  tongues,  like  the  Italian 
and  Spanish. 

The  matter  is  in  truth  debatable,  but  it  is  largely  a 
quarrel  over  terms.  For  practical  purposes,  there  is 
a  national  literature,  particularly  that  produced  during  the 
last  century,  as  distinguished  from  a  British.  If  it  were 
not  so,  Americans  would  be  as  eager  to  buy  British  books 
as  those  of  their  own  authors,  and  it  would  argue  an 
absence  of  independent  national  life,  which  were  to  ignore 
our  wonderful  history  and  all  that  makes  us  American. 

Use  the  same  language  we  do,  but  even  the  language 
has  a  different  idiomatic  color  from  the  present  British, 
as  all  educated  folk  and  especially  traveled  folk  are  aware. 
And  our  historical  evolution,  our  climate  and  physical 
geography,  our  political  and  social  ideals,  and  the  type 
of  people  developed  by  all  these  things  for  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  have  resulted  in  bringing  into  our  letters  a 
quality  and  putting  upon  it  a  stamp  which  are  distinctive, 
justifying  the  opinion  that  there  is  an  American  literature 


viii  Introduction 

in  the  true  sense.  This  view  may  be  held  without  any 
antagonism  toward  British  influence  and  British  accom 
plishment  That  this  distinction  should  have  arisen  is 
entirely  in  accord  with  the  usual  happening  when  peoples 
of  the  same  stock  separate  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  The 
Germanic  settler  in  England  spoke  a  tongue  which  was 
a  dialect  closely  akin  to  the  German  and  still  closer  to 
what  we  now  call  the  Dutch.  In  the  course  of  centuries 
a  differentiation  had  arisen  because  the  German  settlers 
had  sought  another  home,  with  the  result  that  their  tongue, 
English,  became  an  entirely  different  speech  from  that  of 
the  Continental  peoples  whence  they  came.  The  same 
process  is  at  work  in  America ;  the  very  much  slighter 
difference  between  the  tongues  being  due,  of  course,  to 
the  comparatively  short  time  that  has  elapsed  since  the 
separation,  and  the  additional  fact  that  in  our  day  of  rapid 
and  easy  communication  all  speech  is  far  less  isolated 
than  it  was  in  earlier  times.  Centripetal  and  centrifugal 
forces  are  thus  at  work,  and  it  is  inconceivable  that 
American  English  should  ever  become  unintelligible  to 
an  Englishman,  but  it  is  not  at  all  inconceivable  that  in 
the  years  to  come  our  native  speech  shall  become  more 
rather  than  less  distinctive.  Hence,  since  our  speech 
and  our  life  are  thus  independent,  it  is  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world  that  our  literature  should  likewise  and 
increasingly  have  a  flavor  of  its  own. 

It  is  then,  on  the  whole,  correct  to  speak  of  an  Ameri 
can  literature,  meaning  such  a  variation  from  the  parent 
British  product  in  letters  as  to  imply  an  independent 
existence.  In  this  our  literature  is  unique,  since  in  no 
other  case  is  there  an  independent  literature  unless  it  be 
expressed  in  another  language.  This  belief  in  our  own 
literature  should  not  make  Americans  self-satisfied  with 


Introduction  ix 

their  literary  product,  or  lead  them  to  forget  that  while 
we  inherited  our  literature,  as  it  were,  ready-made  from 
England,  historical  conditions  for  several  hundred  years 
kept  back  letters  on  this  continent  from  being  cultivated 
as  they  might  have  been  under  more  favoring  circum 
stances.  The  proper  attitude  for  an  American  toward  his 
own  literature,  it  seems  to  me,  should  be  one  of  modest, 
firm,  hopeful,  unboastful  faith.  In  view  of  our  history, 
we  have  done  much ;  we  have  a  past  to  be  proud  of,  and 
certainly  our  accomplishment  in  the  future  should  be 
noteworthy,  and  signs  are  not  wanting  that  it  will  be. 
There  is  ample  reason  why  an  American  should  have 
especial  interest  in  the  native  literature.  Even  if  the 
greatest  American  writers  —  Poe,  Irving,  Emerson,  and 
Hawthorne  —  were  of  less  than  international  importance, 
they  would  have  a  significance  for  us,  which  is  the  meas 
ure  of  the  truth  and  power  wherewith  they  interpret  for 
us  the  national  conditions  and  ideals :  our  habits  and 
beliefs,  our  hopes  and  potentialities.  Every  representa 
tive  American  writer  is  thus  dear  and  precious,  aside  from 
the  fact  that  he  has  made  what  the  world  calls  great 
literature.  A  few  have  done  so,  but  many  more  have 
reflected  the  conditions  of  life  in  this  country,  and  in  this 
sense  have  constituted  themselves  true  interpreters  of 
these  United  States,  —  to  be  treasured  by  all  Americans 
who  love  their  land.  It  will  be  seen  that  any  just  and 
fruitful  study  of  American  literature  in  its  best  examples 
is,  therefore,  far  more  than  a  study  of  literary  develop 
ment  ;  it  is,  or  should  be,  a  lesson  in  patriotism. 

Just  here  it  will  be  well  to  enlarge  a  little  upon  the 
misconceptions  of  the  term  "  literature  "  itself.  The  word 
is  often  used  simply  to  denote  all  writings  about  a  subject, 
whatever  is  to  be  found  in  print.  Thus  we  speak  of  the 


x  Introduction 

literature  of  a  subject  when  that  subject  is  geography,  and 
mean  the  books  bearing  upon  that  study.  This,  of  course, 
is  a  loose,  general  application  of  the  word,  but,  in  the 
truer  and  better  sense,  literature  refers  to  all  writing  that 
possesses  power  and  beauty  of  expression.  This  truth, 
that  manner  is  important  as  well  as  matter,  has,  however, 
led,  especially  in  our  own  day,  to  a  too  great  emphasis 
upon  technique  at  the  expense  of  thought  and  character. 
/  Really  noble  literature,  on  the  contrary,  exhibits,  in  com 
bination,  beauty  of  form  and  worthiness  of  content ;  or, 
to  modify  a  famous  definition  of  Matthew  Arnold's,  litera 
ture  is  the  most  beautiful  way  of  saying  something  worthy 
.to  be  said.  Very  much  so-called  literature  of  the  nine- 
Jteenth  century  fails  because  it  is  exquisitely  said,  but  not 
i  worth  saying,  —  not  worth  it  intellectually  or  morally ;  or, 
worse,  it  says  with  technical  skill  what  is  paltry  or  vicious. 
The  healthy-minded  student  and  lover  of  literature,  there 
fore,  should  steer  his  course  between  two  mistakes  which 
confront  him,  Scylla  and  Charybdis  :  the  mistake  of  think 
ing  that  all  that  is  in  books  is  literature,  and  the  mistake 
of  believing  that  good  technique  necessarily  means  good 
and  great  literature. 

In  trying  to  get  some  notion  of  American  letters,  there 
is  an  advantage  in  giving  main  attention  to  the  repre 
sentative  writers.  It  fixes  the  eye  on  the  unquestionably 
excellent ;  it  does  not  give  undue  space  to  earlier  writers 
who,  though  important  when  we  are  tracing  the  full  literary 
evolution,  nevertheless  are  chiefly  significant  for  their  his 
torical  value,  as  minor  links  in  the  chain.  Manuals  of 
literature  are  in  the  habit  of  giving  considerable  space, 
for  example,  to  the  Colonial  period,  to  such  figures  as 
Captain  John  Smith  or  Cotton  Mather;  or  later  to  the 
Revolutionary  period  and  the  political  writers  it  begot. 


Introduction  xi 

This  is  perfectly  proper,  if  only  it  be  borne  in  mind  that 
the  purpose  in  so  doing  is  to  study  the  full  course  of  our 
literary  development.  The  danger  is  that  the  beginner, 
or  the  student,  who  as  yet  has  not  a  comprehensive  knowl 
edge  of  the  whole  story,  misunderstands  the  relative  values 
and  gives  to  those  early  writers,  tentative,  feeble,  and  non- 
literary  as  they  mostly  were,  an  exaggerated  importance 
in  the  total  effect.  In  the  present  volume  it  is  desired  to 
avoid  this  possible  evil.  In  fact,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the 
nineteenth  century  includes  the  really  representative  and 
major  work  in  American  letters.  What  came  before, 
interesting  and  historically  important  as  it  was,  stands, 
nevertheless,  for  preparation  and  trial  rather  than  for 
permanently  acceptable  accomplishment. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  EARLIER  PERIOD 

THE  Colonial  time  in  American  history  was  perforce 
sternly  practical.  As  a  result,  of  literature  there  was  little 
or  none.  What  writing  was  done  had  a  utilitarian  aim ;  as 
when  Captain  John  Smith  wrote  an  account  of  the  Virginia 
colony  to  send  to  England  as  a  guide  to  other  immigrants ; 
or  it  was  of  a  religious  nature,  composed  after  the  manner 
of  the  preacher  for  purposes  of  moral  instruction  or  theo- 
logic  guidance.'  To  put  it  briefly,  adventurers  and  clergy 
men,  and  mostly  the  latter,  did  the  bulk  of  the  writing  from 
1607  to  1765  ;  the  adventurers  first,  and  later,  as  conditions 
became  settled  and  civilization  advanced,  the  clergymen. 
When  the  mother  country,  England,  is  contrasted  with 
the  United  States  during  this  period  of  more  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  the  paucity  of  the  literary  product 
here  is  strikingly  illustrated.  In  1607  Shakespeare  was 
alive  and  writing  his  greatest  plays ;  throughout  the  seven 
teenth  century  his  fellow  Elizabethan  dramatists  and  those 
coming  later  in  the  Stuart  reigns  were  making  the  Golden 
Age  of  English  literature.  Great  writers  outside  the  drama, 
like  Bacon,  Hooker,  Raleigh,  and  Dryden,  were  leaving 
works  that  were  to  become  classics.  Late  in  the  seven 
teenth  century  and  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  the 
brilliant  Restoration  Comedy,  led  by  Congreve,  was  being 
produced.  In  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  essay  was  born  with  Addison  and  Steele ;  while  by  the 


2  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

year  1765,  the  limit  of  the  period,  the  modern  novel  had 
been  initiated  and  developed  by  Richardson,  Fielding,  and 
Smollett  to  a  wonderful  degree  of  perfection,  and  Johnson 
and  Goldsmith  were  doing  critical  and  creative  work  which 
was  to  have  an  abiding  place  in  British  literature  annals. 
Set  over  against  this  wonderful  array  of  representative 
English  writers,  in  accomplishment  so  varied,  brilliant,  and 
important  that  no  other  period  of  like  length  can  compare 
with  this  in  the  whole  history  of  English  literature,  the 
names  of  Captain  John  Smith,  Jonathan  Edwards,  and  Cot 
ton  Mather,  —  the  three  most  mighty  writers  during  the 
same  term  of  years  in  America,  —  and  we  can  appreciate 
to  the  full  the  startling  literary  poverty  of  this  country  in 
its  beginnings.  There  is,  of  course,  in  this  comparison  no 
thought  of  reproach.  Given  the  conditions,  it  was  inevitable 
that  it  should  have  been  so.  The  conquering  of  material 
conditions  must  always  precede  intellectual  and  artistic 
activity,  for  their  own  sakes,  and  the  Puritans  and  Cavaliers 
of  the  early  days  in  New  England  and  Virginia  had  set 
before  them  the  most  practical  of  tasks :  to  subjugate  the 
Indian,  make  the  soil  yield  harvests,  clear  the  forests,  and 
in  the  clearings  erect  habitable  homes,  to  begin  housewifery 
within  doors,  and  without  the  simple  industries  of  the 
pioneer  life. 

Such  literary  activity  as  existed  was  divided  at  first 
between  Virginia  and  New  England.  In  the  South,  only 
seventeen  years  after  the  founding  of  Jamestown  in  1607, 
Captain  John  Smith  published  his  "  History  of  Virginia."  l 

1  There  are  numerous  manuals  of  American  literature  in  which  details 
here  omitted  are  supplied,  and  a  much  fuller  treatment  of  this  early  stage 
of  our  literary  development  is  given.  The  reader  wishing  such  a  volume  is 
referred  to  the  following :  "  A  History  of  American  Literature,"  by  Walter  C. 
Bronson. 


The  Earlier  Period  j 

He  was  a  soldier  of  fortune,  a  man  of  the  sword  rather  than 
of  the  pen,  who  wrote  with  no  thought  of  literary  excellence, 
but  yet  with  a  certain  picturesque  vigor,  which  is  at  least  in 
part  explained  by  the  fact  that  he  lived  in  England,  and 
Shakespeare's  English  was  in  the  air.  It  must  be  remem 
bered  that  any  writer  like  Smith  had  the  advantage  of 
English  speech  in  its  very  finest  and  strongest  period  of 
existence  —  the  flower  of  English  expression.  Even  ordi 
nary  men  had  a  righteousness  imputed  to  them  which  was 
not  their  very  own.  The  Elizabethan  Englishman  often 
assumed  a  virtue  even  if  he  had  it  not.  Smith's  account 
of  his  rescue  by  Pocahontas  keeps  his  memory  green  with 
schoolboys  and  their  elders,  and  the  fact  that  some  modern 
historians  doubt  the  story  and,  indeed,  regard  Smith's  state 
ments  in  general  with  skepticism  has  no  effect  upon  the 
affectionate  interest  in  the  dramatic  Pocahontas  scene. 

As  affairs  in  Virginia  became  settled  and  a  genteel  plan 
tation  life  was  developed,  there  might  very  well  have  sprung 
up  a  polite  literature,  but  the  Virginia  gentleman  preferred 
field  sports  and  indoor  social  diversions  to  letters.  There 
is  no  other  name  in  the  Colonial  days  of  that  state  com 
parable  with  that  of  Captain  Smith ;  here  and  there  culti 
vated  men  —  college  presidents  or  professors  or  clergymen 
—  wrote  histories  of  Virginia.  George  Sandys,  Virginia's 
first  poet,  was  simply  an  Englishman  who  finished  upon 
American  soil  his  translation  of  a  poem  of  Ovid's  —  per 
chance  to  take  his  mind  from  the  Indian  troubles  which 
raged  outside.  Strachey  and  Hammond  are  writers  for  the 
specialist  rather  than  the  general  reader.  Colonel  Byrd's 
"  History  of  the  Dividing  Line,"  an  account  of  the  work  of 
establishing,  in  1729,  the  boundary  between  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina,  is  perhaps  more  literary  in  touch  and  tone 


4  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

than  anything  else  of  the  period ;  and  it  must  be  under 
stood  that  the  style  of  these  American  pioneers,  early  as 
well  as  late,  was  that  of  cultivated  persons  accustomed  to 
the  best  models  of  the  mother  country.  There  was  little 
to  mark  them  as  Americans  in  any  true  sense ;  but  some 
times,  as  with  Smith,  they  wrote  of  local  conditions,  and 
this  makes  them  interesting  for  us;  and  at  the  best  they 
united,  like  Colonel  Byrd,  a  graphic  account  of  American 
affairs  with  a  good  deal  of  imagination  and  taste.  Of  the 
Virginia  writers  as  a  group  it  may  be  said  that  their  subjects 
as  a  whole  were  historical  or  descriptive  ;  political  writing  was 
minor  and  hardly  worthy  of  mention. 

Not  so  with  New  England  in  the  same  period.  There  the 
religious  interest  predominated,  and  some  of  the  names  are 
of  genuine  importance  as  writers ;  as  witness  those  of  Brad 
ford,  Eliot,  Hooker,  Roger  Williams,  Anne  Bradstreet,  Wig- 
glesworth,  Cotton  Mather,  Judge  Sewall,  Jonathan  Edwards 
—  a  formidable  list. 

Yet  if  pure  literature  be  the  test,  there  is  very  little,  after 
all,  to  detain  us.  The  poets,  Bradstreet  and  Wigglesworth, 
can  be  placed  by  themselves,  and  of  them  it  is  enough  to 
say  that  the  woman  singer  was  imitative  of  the  stock  English 
model  and  Wigglesworth's  subject,  "Doomsday,"  was  so 
anti-poetical  and  severe  that  it  would  have  taken  the  genius 
of  a  Milton  to  give  it  plastic  shape  and  musical  sound.  Of 
the  prose  writers,  Eliot,  the  Indian  apostle,  did  great  service 
by  his  translation  of  the  Bible  for  the  red  man.  Hooker,  of 
Connecticut,  is  a  name  ever  honored  as  a  town  founder 
and  constitution  maker,  whose  sermons  have  dignity,  and 
often  a  certain  charm.  Governor  Winthrop's  "  History  of 
New  England  "  is  not  so  interesting  for  our  purposes,  how 
ever  valuable  historically,  as  are  his  famous  "  Letters," 


The  Earlier  Period  5 

which  embody  the  correspondence  with  his  wife,  and  in 
their  quaint  phraseology  and  lovely  feeling,  are  not  seldom 
of  unfeigned  beauty ;  while  Judge  SewalTs  "  Diary  "  can  be 
read  with  pleasure  to-day,  largely  for  its  unconscious  humor 
and  piquant  revelations  of  the  way  a  Puritan  of  position 
aforetime  compromised  with  Mammon  while  keeping  his 
godliness.  Cotton  Mather's  chief  fame  is  as  witch  tamer 
rather  than  as  writer,  although  if  bulk  were  the  test,  he 
would  be  in  the  first  rank. 

Unquestionably  the  greatest  name  of  the  group  for 
literature  is  that  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  that  stem  divine, 
whose  fulminations  from  the  pulpit  harried  up  the  souls  of 
his  flock,  whose  view  of  hell  seems  now  among  the  incredi- 
bles  of  early  theology.  Edwards's  sermons  hardly  did 
justice  to  the  personal  loveliness  of  the  man,  his  magnetic 
power  in  the  pulpit  at  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  and, 
indeed,  the  not  seldom  tremendous  vividness  and  strength 
of  his  religious  utterances.  Had  his  powers  been  destined 
to  display  themselves  in  an  environment  more  favorable,  he 
might  have  left  literature  not  fatally  circumscribed  by  such  a 
subject  as  his  well-known  ordination  sermon,  "  Sinners  in  the 
Hands  of  an  Angry  God."  The  speech  of  many  of  these  early 
writers  has  a  certain  attraction,  simply  because  of  what  is 
now  for  us  its  old-time  flavor,  the  quaint  terms  and  un 
wonted  forms  of  the  expression. 

Outside  of  Virginia  and  New  England  there  is  little  that 
calls  for  recognition,  or  takes  permanent  place.  Philadel 
phia  produced  numerous  writers,  but  none  of  such  importance 
as  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  may  fairly  be  called  the  first 
American  producing  literature  of  more  than  historical  in 
terest;  whose  work  indeed  has  value  to-day  as  a  living 
force.  His  earlier  writings  fall  in  the  Colonial  period,  but 


6  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

his  major  work  belongs  in  the  Revolutionary  period,  whose 
ideals  were  potent  in  developing  his  genius.  He  may  there 
fore  be  spoken  of  briefly  in  considering  the  Revolutionary 
period  of  1765-1789. 

Broadly  viewed,  the  writings  stimulated  by  Revolutionary 
events  were  political,  as  was  natural,  where  earlier  the  con 
ditions  of  Colonial  settlement  and  the  religious  interests  of 
the  colonies  furnished  the  dominant  impulse  for  those  who 
registered  their  thoughts  in  writing.  For  the  most  part, 
therefore,  the  printed  works,  during  this  quarter  of  a  century, 
were  practical  rather  than  artistic.  The  expression  was 
secondary,  the  practical  effect  the  main  thing.  Thomas 
Jefferson  wrote  the  Declaration  of  Independence  —  surely  a 
noble  instrument  of  its  kind,  though  somewhat  high-flown 
and  stilted  to  our  modern  taste.  Otis  in  the  North,  and 
Patrick  Henry  in  the  South,  were  orators  far  less  effective  on 
the  printed  page  than  in  their  own  persons ;  it  being  ever 
the  penalty  of  oratory  that  unlike  other  forms  of  literature, 
full  half  its  effect  depends  upon  the  personality  of  the 
speaker,  and  hence  it  has  at  best  a  dubious  life  in  after  time. 
The  Massachusetts  leader,  Samuel  Adams,  was  a  fluent 
essayist,  with  a  turn  for  satire,  while  Alexander  Hamilton  in 
his  state  papers  showed  a  wonderful  maturity  in  view  of  his 
youth,  and  wrote  with  Madison  the  Federalist  papers,  which 
still  are  regarded  as  political  writing  of  a  rare  quality. 
Thomas  Paine's  "  Common  Sense,"  full  of  racy  vigor  as 
well  as  intellectual  power,  made  him  the  early  champion  of 
what  was  then  deemed  atheism  ;  although  read  to-day  his 
religious  position  is  that  of  a  liberal  rather  than  what  we 
would  now  call  a  radical. 

Among  the  letter  writing  of  the  time,  nothing  has  so 
much  literary  worth  as  the  "  Journal "  of  John  Woolman, 


The  Earlier  Period  7 

whose  lucid  spirituality  made  the  calm  beauty  of  his  words 
the  fit  reflection  of  a  noble  personality,  which  in  our  day 
strongly  attracted  the  later  and  greater  Quaker,  Whittier. 
The  more  definitely  literary  endeavor  was  mostly  feeble,  the 
name  of  the  French  Crevecceur  having  some  significance 
because  his  "  Letters  for  an  American  Farmer  "  are  the  first 
examples  of  sketches  of  native  types  and  places  by  one 
whose  point  of  view  was  comparative  and  his  manner  lively. 
Of  poetry  the  quantity  was  satisfactory,  if  not  the  quality. 
Songs  and  ballads  striking  a  popular  note  were  numerous, 
lacking  in  art,  but  of  a  wholesome  patriotism,  and  possessed 
of  much  more  life  than  the  jejune  imitations  of  the  style  of 
Pope,  Johnson,  or  Addison.  Most  worthy  of  mention  in  a 
sketch  like  this  are  Joel  Barlow,  John  Trumbull,  Timothy 
Dwight,  and  Philip  Freneau.  The  two  first  named  were  of 
the  little  group  residing  in  Hartford,  Connecticut,  and 
known  as  the  "  Hartford  wits."  Dwight  was  president  of 
Yale,  an  ancestor  of  the  later  president  of  the  same  name, 
while  Freneau,  a  Huguenot  Frenchman  by  race,  was  a  grad 
uate  of  the  college  now  known  as  Princeton,  lived  in  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  and  pursued  the  varied  occupations 
of  sea  captain  and  editor.  Trumbull  was  a  learned  lawyer 
and  judge ;  he  did  much  verse,  in  which  the  influence  of 
Gray  and  Collins,  as  lyric  models,  was  apparent.  He  wrote 
his  best-known  poem  as  a  vigorous  burlesque  of  epic  style 
to  satirize  the  Tories ;  its  interest  is  of  the  time,  and  the 
nature  of  the  subject  precludes  the  performance  from  being 
American  in  any  true  sense.  Dwight's  chief  contribution  is 
also  epic  in  form  and  serious  in  intention,  "  The  Conquest 
of  Canaan,"  whose  eleven  books  are  commonplace  and 
respectable  to  a  maddening  degree.  Barlow  is  an  example 
of  what  often  happens  in  poetry ;  his  ponderous  "  Colum- 


8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

biad,"  in  which  the  theme  at  least  is  properly  native,  is  but 
a  curiosity  to-day,  while  his  brief  "  Hasty  Pudding  "  contains 
a  genuine  lively  humor  and  picturesque  accounts  of  native 
rural  scenes,  like  the  husking  bee  :  contrary  to  the  "  Colum- 
biad,"  the  breath  of  life  is  in  it,  and  the  poem  can  still  be 
read  with  some  pleasure. 

Far  above  these  other  poets,  or  would-be  poets,  is  Fre- 
neau.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  work  often  seems  a  sort 
of  sounding-board  for  the  reduplication  of  the  strains  of 
standard  masters,  this  singer  possessed  real  imagination,  and 
at  times  wore  the  singing  robes  with  the  true  grace  of  the 
bard  born  not  made.  There  are  touches  of  nature  description 
in  his  verse  —  "The  Wild  Honeysuckle  "is  an  example  — 
which  foretell  Bryant.  His  somber  "  House  of  Night,"  most 
remarkable  of  his  longer  pieces,  has  here  and  there  a  haunt 
ing  quality  like  that  of  Poe's,  and  could  only  have  been  pro 
duced  by  a  man  of  genius  for  imaginative  metrical  expres 
sion.  In  a  word,  Freneau  is  the  sole  American  poet  who 
before  the  nineteenth  century  could  fairly  be  given  the  name 
in  its  higher  meaning.  His  "  Wild  Honeysuckle  "  is  well 
worth  quotation,  and  here  follows  :  — 

THE  WILD  HONEYSUCKLE 

Fair  flower,  that  dost  so  comely  grow, 
Hid  in  this  silent,  dull  retreat, 
Untouch'd  thy  honey'd  blossoms  blow, 
Unseen  thy  little  branches  greet : 
No  roving  foot  shall  find  thee  here, 
No  busy  hand  provoke  a  tear. 

By  Nature's  self  in  white  array'd, 
She  bade  thee  shun  the  vulgar  eye, 
And  planted  here  the  guardian  shade, 
And  sent  soft  waters  murmuring  by ; 


The  Earlier  Period  9 

Thus  quietly  thy  summer  goes, 
Thy  days  declining  to  repose. 

Smit  with  those  charms  that  must  decay, 
I  grieve  to  see  your  future  doom ; 
They  died  —  nor  were  those  flowers  less  gay, 
The  flowers  that  did  in  Eden  bloom ; 
Unpitying  frosts,  and  Autumn's  power 
Shall  leave  no  vestige  of  this  flower. 

From  morning  suns  and  evening  dews 
At  first  thy  little  being  came  : 
If  nothing  once,  you  nothing  lose, 
For  when  you  die  you  are  the  same ; 
The  space  between  is  but  an  hour, 
The  frail  duration  of  a  flower. 

That  last  line  has  a  touch  of  the  true  magic  of  expression. 

From  among  his  contemporaries  who  wrote  prose,  Benja 
min  Franklin  towers  as  a  very  leviathan  of  the  literary  waters. 
His  fame  is  so  thoroughly  fixed  in  our  history,  his  activity 
took  so  many  directions,  that  one  has  to  detach  his  literary 
accomplishment  from  his  reputation  as  editor,  scientist, 
diplomat;  educationist,  philanthropist,  and  man  of  the  world, 
in  order  to  appreciate  it.  Franklin's  life  was  a  long  one ; 
he  began  early  to  express  himself  in  print,  and  he  was  a 
voluminous  writer  who  left  many  books.  But  his  permanent 
contribution  to  our  letters  is  to  be  found  in  "  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac,"  to  which  it  may  be  well  to  add  his  "  Autobiog 
raphy,"  for  an  equivalent  to  which  we  have  to  come  down  to 
our  own  era  and  name  that  by  General  Grant.  The  "  Alma 
nac  "  may  fairly  be  called  an  American  classic  of  its  kind ; 
'  it  lives  to-day  in  many  beautiful  editions,  and  is  widely  read. 
Its  rich  common  sense,  its  aphoristic  wisdom,  couched  in 
rustic  phrase  and  homely  wisdom,  pat  and  perfect  for  its 


to  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

purpose,  and  what  is  more,  the  revelation  of  some  of  the 
fundamental  American  traits  thus  early  in  our  history,  make 
it  a  valuable  document  in  the  case  of  American  literature. 
The  salt  of  its  humor  would  alone  preserve  it.  That  such  a 
work  should  be  produced  by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  argues  strongly  that  an  independent  literature 
would  spring  up  on  this  continent  if  only  time  were  given  it. 
Franklin  is  the  embodiment  of  shrewd,  sane,  good  sense ; 
his  morality  is  that  of  a  town  policeman  ;  his  doctrine  is 
utilitarian ;  there  is  no  height  of  aspiration  or  burst  of  poetry 
in  him.  He  is  worldly  and  other  worldly  rather  than  spirit 
ual.  But  his  time  and  his  own  life  largely  explain  the 
mundane  quality  of  his  work.  The  eighteenth  century  in 
England  was  one  of  small  ideas,  or  the  lack  of  them,  of 
urban  thought  and  ways.  The  ethical  writers  were  cold, 
narrow,  and  hard ;  it  was  an  age  of  taste,  wit,  and  elegance 
rather  than  of  poetry  and  of  passion.  Franklin,  like  every 
other  writer,  felt  the  influence  of  the  time  and  spirit ;  it  is 
best  to  accept  him  in  his  limitations  as  well  as  in  his  unques 
tionable  greatness.  He  is  one  of  the  sturdily  salient  figures, 
both  in  the  life  and  letters  of  our  early  history,  and  certainly 
the  most  considerable  man  of  letters  before  the  year  1800. 

It  is  within  the  period  of  the  republic,  from  1789  to  the 
present  time,  that  the  major  triumphs  of  our  literature  have 
been  won.  Indeed,  it  is  almost  accurate  to  say  that  the 
writers  who  have  made  us  famous  and  taken  a  fixed  place  in 
our  galaxy  fall  after  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  exception  best  worth  speaking  of  after  Franklin  is 
that  of  a  man  who  may  fitly  be  called  the  Father  of  Ameri 
can  Fiction,  Charles  Brockden  Brown.  He  was  a  Philadel 
phia  recluse  and  scholar,  who  began  to  publish  as  early  as 
1797,  and  whose  best-known  novel,  "Wieland,"  dates  from 


The  Earlier  Period  1 1 

1 798.  Brown,  though  trained  for  the  law,  devoted  himself 
to  letters,  edited  magazines,  and  gave  a  rather  pathetic 
example  of  a  man  who,  in  a  day  when  literature  as  a  profes 
sion  hardly  existed,  tried  to  live  by  it,  only  to  die  before  he 
was  forty.  Brown's  "Wieland"  is  still  read  by  students, 
and  the  general  reader  will  at  least  find  it  interesting  and 
powerful.  The  man's  genius  was  exceptionally  somber ;  he 
is  the  natural  forerunner  of  Poe,  a  greater  master  of  the 
weird  and  terrible.  It  is  instructive  to  find  a  writer  and 
thinker  thus  early  making  use  of  psychologic  marvels  in 
fiction,  yet  treating  them  as  did  Poe  after  him  in  the  temper 
of  the  scientific  investigator.  Had  Brown's  fate  fallen  on 
more  propitious  times,  he  might  have  won  a  secure  place  in 
fiction ;  as  it  is,  his  importance  historically  in  the  evolution 
of  American  novel  making  is  great,  for  he  may  be  pointed  to 
as  the  founder  of  serious  fiction  in  this  country.  "  Wieland  " 
can  be  had  in  a  good  modern  edition,  with  a  brief  introduc 
tory  sketch  of  the  author's  life. 

But  better  days  for  literature  were  near  at  hand.  Brown 
found  himself  practically  alone  and  unencouraged  in  Phila 
delphia  in  his  effort  to  produce  worthy  imaginative  writing, 
but  in  New  York,  by  the  might  of  his  genius,  and  upon 
seemingly  barren  ground,  another  writer  of  the  early  nine 
teenth  century,  and  a  greater,  not  only  sowed  seed  that 
should  make  his  name  famous,  but  caused  to  spring  up 
about  him  a  school  of  New  York  literary  men,  so  that  the 
metropolis  was  regarded  for  years  as  the  center  of  such 
activity.  That  man  was  Washington  Irving,  whom  we  shall 
now  consider  in  full  as  our  first  American  leader  of  literature. 


CHAPTER  II 
IRVING 

THE  first  American  to  win  not  only  national  but  interna 
tional  fame  in  letters  was  Washington  Irving.  The  study  of 
our  literary  leaders  therefore  fitly  and  happily  begins  with 
him  —  a  man  pleasant  in  his  life  as  he  was  wholesome  in  his 
varied  and  delightful  work. 

One  can  hardly  realize  to-day,  when  the  incomes  of 
authors  are  generous,  and  literature  has  a  social  and  com 
mercial  life  in  several  of  our  large  cities,  what  an  utter  lack 
of  center  and  atmosphere  Irving  had  to  face  when,  very 
early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  he  essayed  to  turn  from  the 
mercantile  pursuits  of  his  family,  in  which  he  had  been 
trained  and  first  immersed,  to  the  prosecution  of  letters  both 
as  an  interest  and  a  chance  of  support.  New  York  in  the 
opening  decades  of  the  century  had  little  interest  in  litera 
ture  ;  there  was  no  life  from  which  a  young  aspirant  might 
get  encouragement  —  no  salon,  no  social  self-consciousness 
of  the  place  of  letters  in  an  enlightened  community.  Those 
who  would  see  this  plainly  should  consult  Charles  Dudley 
Warner's  excellent  brochure  on  Irving.  Men  of  letters 
throughout  the  United  States  when  the  young  Washington 
began  to  write  were  few  and  far  between;  there  was  no 
sense  of  associative  life  among  authors.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  was  no  support  of  literature  on  the  part  of  the  public, 

12 


Irving  13 

no  inducement  to  adopt  this  profession  on  the  part  of  those 
possessing  indisputable  talent.  Yet  just  because  of  this 
paucity  of  rivals,  this  smallness  of  the  supply  as  well  as  of 
the  demand,  a  man  like  Irving  had  his  opportunity,  seized 
it,  made  the  demand  by  the  attraction  of  what  he  supplied, 
and  became  the  Father  of  American  Literature. 

For  it  is  certainly  just  to  give  him  this  title.  He  is  the 
first  of  our  authors  to  give  dignity  to  letters,  to  produce 
work  that  won  international  recognition  —  Franklin  had 
foreign  fame  as  a  diplomat  and  scientist  rather  than  man  of 
letters  —  to  found  and  foster  a  local  school  of  literature. 
The  Knickerbocker  writers,  who  drew  their  name  from  one 
of  Irving's  most  famous  books,  we  call  the  group  of  literary 
folk  who  lived  in  and  about  New  York  under  the  leadership 
or  at  least  encouraged  by  the  influence  of  Washington 
Irving. 

This  genial  autocrat  of  our  early  literature  had  the  writing 
gift  in  his  own  individuality  rather  than  by  family  predispo 
sition.  His  father  was  a  Scotchman  in  trade,  his  mother 
English,  neither  of  them  born  in  this  land.  When  Irving 
was  born  in  1783  in  New  York  City,  his  father  was  engaged 
in  mercantile  pursuits,  and  the  family  was  one  of  plain,  com 
fortable  respectability,  Presbyterian  in  its  church  leanings. 
Young  Washington  was  a  lively  lad  who  at  twelve  years  of 
age  was  scribbling  verse  and  prose,  and  a  year  later  was 
guilty  of  a  play  for  amateur  performers.  His  love  for  the 
theater  was  a  youthful  passion  and  his  biographers  give  us 
some  amusing  incidents  connected  with  the  taste ;  among 
others,  a  picture  of  the  stripling  attending  nine  o'clock  fam 
ily  prayers  and  then  stealing  forth  from  his  bedroom  window 
in  order  to  hurry  to  the  unholy  playhouse.  He  made  vari 
ous  excursions  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  regions  of  the  Hudson, 


14  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

and  being  a  rather  delicate  boy,  was  given  plenty  of  rope  and 
not  too  onerous  studies,  which  were  conducted  by  private 
tutors.  At  sixteen  he  was  set  to  the  study  of  law,  —  the 
usual  story  of  the  born  man  of  letters  trying  a  profession 
which  has  stood  a  sort  of  nurse  to  literary  men  innumerable, 
literature  inevitably  weaning  them  from  Coke  and  Black- 
stone.  Irving,  like  Lowell  later,  cared  naught  for  the  law, 
and  he  still  being,  at  twenty-one  years,  in  indifferent  health, 
his  brothers,  who  were  older  and  successfully  engaged  in  the 
cutlery  business,  sent  him  abroad  —  a  course  (as  we  can  now 
see)  eminently  wise  in  view  of  his  career.  He  spent  a  year 
or  more  in  cultured  travel,  frequenting  picture  galleries  and 
theaters  and  meeting  people  of  social  position,  this  serving 
to  polish  his  natural  aptitude  for  polite  intercourse,  —  for 
Irving  had  rare  gifts  in  this  direction,  and  his  long  life  de 
veloped  them  to  the  full.  This  social  talent  had  full  sway 
on  his  return  to  this  country,  when  he  became  a  figure  in 
the  best  circles  of  Gotham  and  neighboring  cities.  He  was 
admitted  to  the  New  York  bar,  although  it  may  well  be  be 
lieved  that  legal  cares  sat  lightly  on  his  soul.  Just  then,  in 
his  brilliant  young  flush  of  manhood,  a  keen  sorrow  fell  on 
him.  He  was  enamored  of  a  lovely  young  girl,  Maud 
Hoffman  by  name,  and  she  had  plighted  herself  to  him. 
At  eighteen  she  died,  and  although  by  the  gentling  hand  of 
time  the  experience  became  a  fragrant  memory,  making 
his  wit  stingless  and  giving  his  pathos  a  touch  which  all  the 
world  loves,  at  first  Irving  suffered  deeply.  Indeed,  in  a 
sense,  he  never  got  over  the  loss.  He  remained  a  bach 
elor  throughout  his  life,  and  long  years  afterward  referred  to 
this  early  sorrow  as  still  an  unhealed  wound  of  the  heart. 
It  is  not  unduly  imaginative  to  see  running  through  the 
charm  of  Washington  Irving's  essays  a  certain  poetic  sensi- 


Irving  IJ 

bility  toward  women,  born  of  this  unbroken  romance  of  his 
early  years. 

It  was  while  suffering  from  this  grief  that  Irving  began 
the  literary  labor  which  was  to  bring  him  fame.  He  had 
already  tried  his  hand  at  journalism  in  a  series  of  letters 
for  the  Morning  Chronicle  (a  newspaper  owned  by  his 
brother  Peter)  under  the  pen  name  of  Jonathan  Oldstyle. 
In  these,  the  influence  of  Addison  can  be  felt  in  its 
ease,  elegance,  and  playful  humor.  His  first  collected 
papers,  under  the  title  "  Salmagundi,"  were  contributed  in 
•  some  twenty  numbers  of  a  fortnightly  paper  during  the 
'years  1807-1808,  Irving  having  as  associate  his  eldest 
brother  William  and  his  friend,  James  K.  Paulding.  Its 
aim,  like  that  of  the  "Spectator"  in  England  a  century 
before,  was  to  display  the  foibles  and  fashions  of  the  town 
in  a  spirit  of  gentlemanly  good  humor  and  tolerance.  This 
series  made  a  good  deal  of  talk,  and  the  young  editor  with 
drew  it  at  the  year's  end,  apparently  never  having  taken 
the  venture  with  much  seriousness. 

The  ever  memorable  and  delightful  "History  of  New 
York,"  commonly  called  the  "Knickerbocker  History," 
because  attributed  in  the  preface  and  by  cunningly  con 
cocted  advance  references  in  newspapers  to  Diedrich 
Knickerbocker,  Esq.,  a  supposititious  Dutchman,  whose 
mysterious  disappearance  added  just  the  needed  curiosity 
for  contemporary  readers,  appeared  in  1809,  when  Irving 
was  twenty-six;  and  was  thus  the  work  of  a  very  young 
man.  The  spectacle  of  the  author  writing  the  half-finished 
"History,"  so  full  of  harmless  satire  and  happy  extrava 
ganza,  while  his  soul  yet  throbbed  with  sorrow  over  his 
lost  love,  is  one  of  the  dramatic  incidents  of  literary  his 
tory.  The  "  Knickerbocker  History "  was  an  earnest  of 


1 6  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

living's  claim  to  genuine  rank  in  letters,  a  notification 
that  a  new  American  author  of  importance  had  arrived. 
It  became  at  once  popular,  and  the  fact  that  Irving  was 
the  man  behind  the  work  was  soon  an  open  secret.  A 
success  of  course  strengthened  his  position  in  society. 
The  year  after  its  publication  he  became  a  silent  partner 
in  his  brothers'  business,  and  four  years  later  was  appointed 
military  aide  to  Governor  Tompkins.  This  contact  with 
official  life  also  widened  his  social  relations. 

Little  writing  was  done  after  the  completion  of  the  "  His 
tory  "  for  some  years.  Irving  had  a  great  capacity  for  the 
light,  graceful,  and  gracious  intercourse  of  the  drawing-room. 
Wine  suppers  he  enjoyed,  and  club  life,  or  its  early  equiva 
lent.  He  had  somewhat  the  effect  of  an  elegant  idler  during 
this  time ;  was  a  man  about  town,  in  the  higher  sense  of  the 
term.  To  put  it  plainly,  he  seemed  rather  lazy  perhaps  to 
his  hard-working  brothers.  But  as  we  look  at  his  life  and 
his  work  in  retrospect,  we  can  easily  understand  that  all  this 
assimilation  of  social  experience  was  of  value  to  him;  it 
made  possible  his  later  distinctive  essay  work;  and  his 
genial  habit  of  reading  the  best,  and  that  widely,  was  also 
in  the  nature  of  preparation  for  his  graver  historical  writ 
ings.  Robert  Browning  throughout  his  career  enjoyed 
society  in  several  lands  and  gave  an  amount  of  time  and 
strength  thereto  which  some  deemed  strange.  Yet  in  his 
case  his  most  representative  work  was  fed  by  such  expe 
rience.  It  is  quite  true  that  Irving  did  not  make  a  methodi 
cal  slave  of  himself  in  his  literary  work ;  he  did  not,  like 
Anthony  Trollope,  write  so  many  words  a  minute,  and  write 
them  whether  on  sea  or  land.  Irving  took  long  periods  for 
rumination,  he  worked  intermittently,  at  times  fiercely,  until 
the  task  was  completed ;  then  came  the  reaction.  But  he 


Irving  17 

was  a  man  of  genius,  and  it  is  misleading  to  dub  him  lazy,  or 
seek  to  triangulate  his  life  by  a  scientist's  quadrant. 

The  "  History  of  New  York  "  was  a  mock-heroic  account 
of  the  settlement  of  Manhattan  by  the  Dutch  "from  the 
beginning  of  the  world  to  the  end  of  the  Dutch  dynasty." 
It  was  begun  as  a  parody  of  a  certain  very  serious  study  of 
New  York  by  one  Mitchell,  a  member  of  the  New  York 
Historical  Society,  and  the  intention  was  that  Peter  and 
Washington  Irving  should  together  concoct  it ;  but  business 
kept  the  other  from  his  part,  and  luckily,  as  it  turned  out, 
Washington  executed  the  work  alone.  The  author  represents 
that  the  blotted  manuscript  of  the  book  was  left  in  a  New 
York  hostelry  by  Diedrich,  who  is  described  as  impover 
ished,  of  uncertain  temper,  and  something  of  a  busybody. 
One  smiles  to-day  doubly  in  opening  the  "  History  "  :  first 
for  the  amusement  it  furnishes  in  itself,  and  again  as  one 
conjures  up  a  picture  of  the  readers  of  Irving's  time,  begin 
ning  this  solemn  nonsense  with  the  expectation  of  finding 
improving  information.  The  merit  of  the  work  lies  in  its 
manner,  its  delicious  exaggeration,  its  unforgetable  pen- 
pictures  of  Heinrich  Hudson  and  the  other  worthies  of 
that  early  civilization,  in  the  burlesque  of  social  customs, 
dress,  domestic  life,  and  life  civic  —  all  thrown  off  with 
infectious  abandon,  with  a  flowing  pen,  and  (in  appearance 
at  least)  with  an  inexhaustible  fresh  spirit.  It  is  with  such 
gusto  that  the  large  men  of  literature  always  write ;  they  pro 
duce  what  is  to  be  a  classic  as  a  meiejeu  t?  esprit,  much  as  a 
schoolboy  conducts  a  game  on  a  Saturday's  holiday.  The 
literary  style  in  which  all  this  is  done  varies  in  accordance 
with  the  demand,  the  required  atmosphere ;  for  to  create  an 
atmosphere  and  then  to  keep  it  by  a  congruous  flow  of  lan 
guage  is  one  of  the  great  secrets  of  good  literature.  But 
c 


1 8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Irving's  manner  in  the  "  History  "  may  fairly  be  shown  in 
the  following  passage ;  the  reader  however  being  cautioned 
that  our  author  suffers  inevitably  from  a  short  selection, 
inasmuch  as  his  peculiar  felicity  comes  from  an  effect  of 
quiet  charm  and  grace,  of  fitness  and  melody,  to  be  felt 
in  their  totality. 

The  detached,  striking,  bizarre  effects  of  latter-day  litera 
ture  are  not  to  be  sought  in  him  :  — 

About  six  miles  from  the  renowned  city  of  the  Manhattoes,  in 
that  sound  or  arm  of  the  sea  which  passes  between  the  mainland 
and  Nassua,  on  Long  Island,  there  is  a  narrow  strait,  where  the 
current  is  violently  compressed  between  shouldering  promontories 
and  horribly  perplexed  by  rocks  and  shoals.  Being,  at  the  best 
of  times,  a  very  violent,  impetuous  current,  it  takes  these  impedi 
ments  in  mighty  dudgeon,  boiling  in  whirlpools,  brawling  and 
fretting  in  ripples,  raging  and  roaring  in  rapids  and  breakers,  and, 
in  short,  indulging  in  all  kinds  of  wrong-headed  paroxysms.  At 
such  times,  woe  to  any  unlucky  vessel  that  ventures  within  its 
clutches.  This  termagant  humor,  however,  prevails  only  at 
certain  times  of  tide.  At  low  water,  for  instance,  it  is  as  pacific 
a  stream  as  you  would  wish  to  see ;  but  as  the  tide  rises,  it  begins 
to  fret ;  at  half-tide,  it  roars  with  might  and  main,  like  a  bull  bel 
lowing  for  more  drink ;  but  when  the  tide  is  full,  it  relapses  into 
quiet  and,  for  a  time,  sleeps  as  soundly  as  an  alderman  after  din 
ner.  In  fact,  it  may  be  compared  to  a  quarrelsome  toper,  who  is 
a  peaceable  fellow  enough  when  he  has  no  liquor  at  all  or  when 
he  has  a  skinful,  but  who  when  half  seas  over  plays  the  very  devil. 
This  mighty,  blustering,  bullying,  hard-drinking  little  strait  was  a 
place  of  great  danger  and  perplexity  to  the  Dutch  navigators  of 
ancient  days  —  hectoring  their  tub-built  barks  in  a  most  unruly 
style,  whirling  them  about  in  a  manner  to  make  any  but  a  Dutch 
man  giddy,  and  not  unfrequently  standing  them  upon  rocks  and 
reefs,  as  it  did  the  famous  squadron  of  Oloffe  the  Dreamer  when 
seeking  a  place  to  found  the  city  of  Manhattoes.  Whereupon, 
out  of  sheer  spleen,  they  denominated  it  Helle-gat,  and  solemnly 


Irving  19 

gave  it  over  to  the  devil.  This  appellation  has  since  been  aptly- 
rendered  into  English  by  the  name  of  Hell-gate  and  into  non 
sense  by  the  name  of  Hurlgate,  according  to  certain  foreign  in 
truders,  who  neither  understood  Dutch  nor  English  —  may  St. 
Nicholas  confound  them  ! 

Of  any  one  quality,  humor  predominates  in  this  early 
masterpiece.  And  since  humor  has  always  been  a  marked 
characteristic  of  American  literature,  along  with  sanity,  a 
democratic  spirit  of  brotherhood  and  a  streak  of  idealism,  it 
is  interesting  to  inquire  what  are  the  characteristics  of  this 
earliest  humorist  of  distinction  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
The  present-day  reader,  accustomed  to  the  broader  and 
sometimes  coarser  fooling  of  the  newspaper  funny  man,  or 
to  the  school  of  humor  for  which  Artemus  Ward  stands  as 
father,  is  likely  perhaps  to  find  a  writer  like  Irving  a  little  tame. 
His  fun  does  not  involve  verbal  play,  nor  violent  antithesis, 
nor  grotesque  exaggeration ;  nor,  in  spite  of  all  its  freedom 
in  dealing  with  personalities,  is  it  so  daring  as  the  fun  of  a 
later  dispensation  to  which  nothing  is  sacred.  In  this  sense 
it  is  more  in  the  British  tradition.  The  day  had  not  yet 
come  for  the  full  unfolding  of  the  American  sensibility  to 
the  ludicrous,  developed  by  contact  with  democratic  and 
material  conditions.  Irving  begets  an  inward  smile,  where 
we  laugh  at  Mark  Twain,  or  mayhap  guffaw  at  Bill  Nye  or 
George  Ade,  or  Mr.  Dooley.  But  the  "  Knickerbocker 
History  "  is  very  genuine  humor,  nevertheless,  and  more's 
the  pity  if  our  jaded  taste  fails  to  respond  to  it  ;  such  a 
result  should  suggest  the  possibility  that  food  too  highly 
spiced  unfits  for  that  which  is  more  eupeptic. 

After  the  "  History,"  Irving  did  nothing  of  importance  as 
a  writer  for  ten  years,  from  1809  to  1819,  in  which  latter  year 
"  The  Sketch  Book  "  began  to  appear.  To  be  sure,  he  wrote 


2O  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

sundry  articles  for  a  magazine  he  edited  for  a  while,  but  for 
the  most  part  this  was  a  period  of  observation,  development, 
maturing.  In  1815  he  went  abroad  for  a  sojourn  that 
stretched  itself  out  to  seventeen  years  of  travel  and  resi 
dence.  He  was  a  year  or  so  over  thirty  when  he  went,  a 
man  of  nearly  fifty  when  he  returned.  He  left  his  native 
land  partly  because  there  were  reasons  connected  with  his 
business  which  called  for  his  attention  there ;  partly,  too, 
because  he  liked  the  old  country,  much  in  him  naturally 
responding  to  the  social  brilliancy  and  culture-steeped  tradi 
tions  of  the  older  civilization.  Friends  he  had  made  across 
the  water  urged  him  to  come ;  and  there  was  nothing  of 
compelling  importance  either  in  the  way  of  family  ties  or 
business  cares  to  bid  him  remain  in  America.  And  so  dur 
ing  these  fruitful  years  in  his  youthful  prime  and  dowered  in 
many  ways  for  enlightened  social  communion,  Irving  saw 
and  wrote  —  and  eventually  conquered. 

His  wanderings  were  wide.  The  first  five  years  of  the 
seventeen  were  spent  in  Great  Britain  —  much  of  the  time 
in  the  English  capital ;  then  for  the  most  of  six  years,  from 
1820  to  1826,  he  was  on  the  Continent;  for  three  years  in 
Spain,  then  back  to  England  again  as  secretary  of  the  United 
States  legation.  This  prolonged  residence  abroad  had  a 
very  great  influence  on  Irving's  life,  his  thought,  and  hence 
his  literary  work.  He  absorbed  the  spirit  and  essence  of 
English  social  life,  old  and  new ;  and  those  two  typical  vol 
umes  of  essays,  "The  Sketch  Book"  and  "Bracebridge 
Hall,"  were  largely  the  result.  He  browsed  in  foreign  libra 
ries,  and  derived  inspiration  from  the  art  treasures  of  Spain, 
and  history  like  his  "  Columbus  "  and  "The  Alhambra"  were 
given  to  the  world.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  his 
European  experience  changed  his  life  work  as  an  author, 


Irving  21 

and  yet,  unlike  other  Americans  upon  whom  foreign  sojourn 
has  worked  more  than  a  sea  change,  Irvmgfs  genius  never 
lost  its  distinctively  American  quality.  Henry  James  by 
such  a  residence  has  ceased  to  be  an  American  author  in 
any  sense.  Bret  Harte,  on  the  other  hand,  in  a  similar  resi 
dence,  continued  to  the  day  of  his  death  to  write  stories 
that  spoke  alone  of  the  native  soil.  To  retain  the  domestic 
flavor  under  such  circumstances  is  as  well  for  an  author  as 
for  a  grape  or  pear. 

Everywhere  he  went  abroad  Irving  was  received  with 
cordiality  and  kindness  :  he  was  sought  after,  and  deservedly 
so,  for  his  manners  were  of  the  best,  his  personality  charm 
ing,  and  his  growing  literary  reputation  such  as  to  remove 
social  barriers.  There  is  testimony  and  to  spare  of  the  good 
time  he  had,  the  pleasant  impression  he  made;  many  a 
reference  in  letter  or  memoir  is  preserved  to  prove  it.  He 
met  familiarly  the  notables  of  letters  and  society :  in  view 
of  the  period  and  Irving's  plebeian  origin  this  speaks  elo 
quently  for  his  winning  qualities. 

Irving  seemed  to  need  the  pressure  of  necessity  to  pro 
duce  literature.  When,  because  of  the  hard  times  brought 
on  by  the  War  of  1812,  the  business  houses  of  New  York 
were  tottering  and  unstable,  Irving  had  tried  magazine  edi 
torship  to  help  the  house  of  Irving  Brothers,  though  with 
little  success ;  in  England,  half  a  dozen  years  later,  came  to 
him  news  of  the  failure  of  the  firm,  and  the  loyal  silent  part 
ner  bethought  him  how  he  might  help.  Editorial  work,  with 
handsome  remuneration,  he  refused  ;  he  sat  down  and  made 
a  permanent  contribution  to  American  literature  by  writing 
"The  Sketch  Book,"  or,  to  give  it  its  full  title,  "The 
Sketch  Book  of  Geoffrey  Crayon,  Gent,"  the  seven  parts  of 
which  appeared  during  1819  and  1820.  It  may  be  here 


22  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

remarked  parenthetically  that  two-thirds  of  the  standard  lit 
erature  of  the  world  has  been  produced  under  some  form 
of  practical  pressure  ;  Grub  Street  has  done  more  for  letters 
than  Vanity  Fair  —  a  reflection  perhaps  on  man's  natural 
laziness,  but  on  the  whole  enheartening  in  its  suggestion  of 
the  wholesome  influence  of  work  under  necessity. 

Irving  was  winningly  modest  in  his  feeling  about  the  merit 
of  "  The  Sketch  Book."  He  only  wished,  he  said,  "  to  blow 
a  flute  accompaniment  in  the  National  Concert " ;  yet  he 
did  a  distinctive  and  undying  thing,  because  it  was  in  him 
\to  do  it,  and  neither  foreign  residence  nor  themes  often 
quite  un-American  could  hide  certain  underlying  qualities 
which  give  the  book  its  native  smack.  Then,  too,  along 
with  essays  that  are  entirely  and  charmingly  British,  that 
seem  to  come  from  the  heart  of  an  Oliver  Goldsmith,  —  that 
on  Stratford-on-Avon,  for  example,  or  the  lovely  paper  on 
Westminster  Abbey,  —  are  those  two  immortal  idyls  of  the 
Hudson  River,  "Rip  Van  Winkle,"  "The  Legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow,"  whose  very  names  stir  the  imagination  and  warm 
the  heart  of  every  good  American.  By  writing  these  tales, 
genial,  sunny,  touched  with  delicate  fancy  and  with  a  half 
serious  face  toward  the  legendary  which  is  altogether  de 
lightful,  Irving  put  once  and  for  all  the  seal  of  poetic  imag 
ination  upon  certain  noble  things  which  did  not  before 
possess  this  double  charm  of  nature  and  art.  Hereafter, 
the  Hudson  became  his  river  even  more  than  it  was  Hem- 
rich's  of  old  —  a  stately  stream,  around  which,  as  around  the 
German  Rhine,  hover  mythic  shapes,  and  down  whose  water 
ways  the  wings  of  poetry  and  romance,  like  magic  sails,  bear 
the  awakened  souls  of  men.  And  how  typically  and  finely 
American  they  are,  too,  in  scene  and  character,  in  humor  and 
pathos  !  The  fact  that  Rip  has  for  a  generation  served  in 


Irving  23 

play  form  as  an  exponent  of  the  art  of  the  most  beloved  and 
favored  of  living  American  comedians,  has  of  course  greatly 
strengthened  its  hold  upon  the  public.  But  the  tale,  as  told 
by  Irving,  will  always  be  a  favorite  and  has  no  need  of  the 
stage  to  give  it  a  place  in  popular  regard. 

But  judged  as  literary  product,  and  for  their  gentle,  lovely 
humanity,  other  of  the  sketches  making  up  this  welcome 
addition  to  essay  literature  are,  although  placed  upon  Brit 
ish  shores,  full  of  Irving's  quality.  "The  Broken  Heart," 
"The  Widow  and  Her  Son,"  and  such-like  narratives  seem 
a  little  oversentimental  to  us  to-day;  they  appeal  to  the 
taste  for  the  pathetic,  with  small  attempt  to  disguise  the 
working  of  the  pumps  —  the  method  of  Dickens  at  times, 
as  in  the  famous  scene  of  the  death  of  Little  Nell.  But 
those  sketches,  even  the  most  deliciously  mournful  of  them, 
were  immensely  liked  in  their  day ;  as  Macaulay  wept  over 
"  Little  Dombey,"  so  did  Byron  over  "  The  Broken  Heart." 
These  papers,  however,  were  not  the  most  durable  part  of  the 
book  which,  aside  from  the  inimitable  Hudson  River  tales 
already  mentioned,  is  less  noteworthy  for  the  stories  than 
for  the  essays,  of  which  the  Stratford  paper  is  a  classic  ex 
ample.  Tourists  who  visit  the  Red  Horse  Inn,  in  Shake 
speare's  native  town,  are  shown  the  room  in  which  he  wrote, 
the  big  chair  he  sat  in,  the  poker  wherewith  he  stirred  the 
fire  into  a  cheery  blaze,  the  very  pen  he  used.  It  is  one 
of  the  minor  magics  of  a  place  so  prepotent  in  its  supreme 
magic  of  the  master  bard.  Irving  shaded  off  with  utmost 
ease  from  the  essay  to  the  short  story ;  it  would  hardly  be 
too  much  to  say  that  he  created  the  short  tale  in  English. 
Dickens  wrote  this  form,  now  so  vastly  cultivated  and  popu 
lar,  somewhat  later ;  Cooper  had  no  success  in  it.  But  to 
Washington  Irving  it  was  a  natural  medium  for  imaginative 


24  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

expression.  He  is  first  and  foremost  an  essayist ;  by  which 
I  mean,  it  is  not  so  much  the  subject  he  deals  with  as  the 
deft  and  delicate  way  he  handles  it,  which  gives  him  his 
charm.  Very  rarely  is  his  tale  a  story  for  story's  sake ;  it 
is  a  mood,  a  portrayal  of  character ;  for  the  best  effect,  a 
single  one;  it  is  a  picture,  an  impression.  There  are  in 
timate  relations,  therefore,  between  the  essay  and  fiction 
in  the  form  of  the  short  story.  In  the  early  eighteenth 
century,  the  English  essay  was  originated  by  Addison  and 
Steele  in  the  "Spectator";  yet  the  most  famous  series  in 
that  immortal  journal  was  made  up  of  the  Roger  de  Coverley 
sketches  which  are  a  kind  of  fiction,  certainly,  perhaps  as 
good  an  example  as  literature  can  show  of  the  merging  of 
essay  and  fiction.  And  as  direct  outcome  of  all  this  essay 
activity,  the  modern  novel  sprang,  Cadmus-like,  into  full  life 
before  the  middle  of  that  century. 

So  with  Irving.  Influenced  by  these  early  essayists,  Addi 
son  and  Steele,  and  by  Oliver  Goldsmith  a  generation  later, 
he  remained  an  essayist  to  the  end  of  his  days.  Yet  he 
founded  the  short  story,  because  that  form  is  but  the  essay 
(or  can  be)  with  a  little  more  of  the  fictive,  of  objectivity 
and  of  dramatized  character  —  the  essayist,  instead  of  talk 
ing  so  frankly  about  himself,  talks  about  some  imagined 
character  who  is,  as  likely  as  not,  only  his  alter  ego,  behind 
which  the  real  speaker  hides.  This,  no  doubt,  is  what  Mr. 
Howells  has  in  mind  when  he  speaks  of  Dr.  Holmes's  "  Auto 
crat  "  as  an  example  of  the  dramatized  essay  —  something 
half  fiction,  half  essay,  Holmes  being  essentially  an  essayist 
in  his  prose. 

"  The  Sketch  Book,"  then,  is  one  of  Irving's  happiest  and 
most  representative  works,  a  contribution  to  American  litera 
ture  much  beloved  and  admired.  Two  years  later  came  a 


Irving  25 

second  book  of  essays,  "  Bracebridgt  Hall,"  as  typical  and 
as  well  known,  if  less  attractive  to  the  American  reader ; 
pei  haps  only  so  because  the  papers  are  all  of  English 
themes,  reflecting  more  steadily  than  did  the  earlier  volume 
Irving's  British  experiences.  But  we  must  not  make  too 
much  of  boundary  lines  in  literature,  and  these  papers  are 
wonderfully  sympathetic,  graceful,  and  genial  studies  of  the 
older  English  life,  which  was  felt  by  Irving  in  all  its  charm 
and  suggestion,  as  it  has  been  by  very  few  of  the  native 
British  writers.  There  is  a  leisureliness  in  the  movement,  a 
quaint  humor  and  sentiment,  an  effect  of  the  picturesque 
for  its  own  sake,  especially  refreshing  in  our  day  of  haste, 
strenuousness,  and  in  some  quarters  suspicion  even  of  inno 
cent  enjoyment. 

Here  again  Irving's  gift  for  the  sketch  finds  full  play,  and 
some  of  the  choicest  things  in  the  collection  belong  to  this 
phase  of  fiction.  We  may  take  the  "  Stout  Gentleman " 
as  a  happy  example,  and  it  is  reproduced  at  the  end  of  this 
study  of  Irving  and  his  work,  although,  perhaps,  not  so  well 
known  as  American  sketches,  like  the  "  Rip  Van  Winkle  " 
legend,  or  that  of  "  Sleepy  Hollow."  The  sketch  of  this 
humorously  seen  gentleman  illustrates  the  truth  of  what  has 
been  said  of  the  born  essayist,  caring  more  for  the  study  of 
character,  for  impression,  atmosphere,  and  style  than  for 
story  interest.  There  is  hardly  a  story  at  all  to  this  inimi 
table  picture ;  we  do  not  hear  the  stout  gentleman  speak ; 
we  do  not  even  see  him ;  his  vanishing  coat  tails  as  he  steps 
into  his  cab  in  the  morning  is  our  nearest  approach  to  vision. 
And  yet  what  a  keen  interest  is  aroused  in  his  personality, 
as  the  narrator  of  the  incident  describes  his  coming  to  the 
inn,  and  the  impression  he  makes  upon  all  concerned. 
How  clearly,  too,  we  see  that  inn  reading  room,  and  hear 


16  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

the  boots  call  out  the  name  of  the  mysterious  stranger  !  It 
is  all  so  picturesque,  genial,  enjoyable.  Every  page  is  mel 
lowed  by  a  rich  humanity.  The  reader  feels  the  wholesome, 
sweet  personality  of  the  writer  behind  the  scenes,  and  is 
glad  to  look  upon  a  bit  of  life  through  his  all-seeing  eyes 
that  have  in  them  the  good-humored  twinkle  of  a  lover  of 
his  kind.  We  can  think  of  no  one  in  English  literature, 
save  perhaps  Dickens,  a  conjurer  in  this  kind,  who  could 
have  made  so  much  out  of  little. 

The  "Bracebridge  Hall"  sketches  draw  material,  not 
only  from  England,  but  from  Spain  and  Normandy,  and 
from  among  the  treasures  of  Dutch  tradition.  Several  love 
tales  are  among  them,  and  probably  these  the  modern 
reader  will  enjoy  less  than  such  a  thing  as  "  Dolph  Heyliger  " 
in  the  way  of  a  native  theme :  or,  for  a  blend  of  love  and 
action  set  in  a  framework  of  Spanish  romance,  "  The  Student 
of  Salamanca."  These  sketches  are  thoroughly  Irvingesque 
in  the  way  in  which  they  blend  kindly  satire  with  touches 
of  tender  sentiment  and  picturesque  description,  —  a  sort  of 
April  day  effect  of  smiles  and  tears,  combined  in  pleasurable 
proportion.  At  times,  Irving's  heavier  pathos,  as  in  the 
earlier  works,  possesses  a  too  conscious  and  prolonged 
appeal  to  the  lachrymose  gland.  But  his  audience  was 
readier  for  a  cry  than  ours  of  to-day,  and  less  insistent  on 
psychologic  accuracy. 

Irving  followed  up  "  Bracebridge  Hall "  with  "  The  Tales 
of  a  Traveller,"  in  which  the  form  is  steadily  that  of  narra 
tive  fiction.  For  this  very  reason,  and  because  Irving  was 
so  surely  an  essayist,  the  work,  as  a  whole,  is  less  typical  of 
his  genius  than  the  two  volumes  of  sketches  preceding  it. 
Yet  these  tales  can  be  highly  enjoyed  to-day,  and  contain 
certain  things  of  special  interest  for  American  readers. 


Irving  27 

Once  again  the  writer  uses  the  winding  waters  and  wooded 
heights  of  the  Hudson,  or  picturesque  old  Manhattan,  as 
backgrounds  for  the  story.  One  such  is  "  The  Money 
Digger."  The  collection  also  includes  the  capital  satiric 
sketches  of  the  Bohemian  literary  life  entitled  "  Buckthorne 
and  His  Friends."  As  good  as  anything  in  the  book,  and 
perhaps  best  known,  is  the  tale  called  "  Wolfert's  Roost,"  a 
fine  specimen  of  the  author's  imaginative  molding  of  a 
native  local  tradition. 

Upon  these  three  books  of  essay  and  narrative,  along  with 
the  "  Knickerbocker  History,"  Irving's  fame  solidly  rests. 
But  his  three  years'  Spanish  residence  and  the  studies  he 
made  during  it  led  to  a  series  of  historical  writings  second 
only  in  importance  to  the  "  Sketch  Book  "  work.  He  began 
with  the  publication  of  his  "  Life  of  Columbus,"  still,  despite 
the  great  amount  of  investigation  since  put  upon  the  mighty 
Genoese  in  the  modern  critical  spirit,  a  book  of  value,  be 
cause  it  gives,  whatever  corrections  are  to  be  made  in  the 
light  of  new  information,  a  rounded  and  vital  presentment 
of  his  subject.  This  "  Life  "  is  in  many  respects  the  best  to 
put  in  the  hands  of  the  intelligent  reading  public.  Irving 
was  primarily  a  man  of  letters ;  in  writing  history  he  was 
painstaking  in  his  gathering  of  available  historical  material, 
but  cared  most  to  clothe  fact  with  the  flesh  and  blood  of  warm 
and  moving  words,  pictures,  episodes.  Hence  here,  as  else 
where  in  his  biographies  and  histories,  the  reader  gets  above 
all  a  vivid  sense  of  the  dramatic  value  of  the  wonderful 
career  of  Christopher  Columbus  —  which  surely  should  be 
the  highest  aim  of  the  historian.  Three  years  later,  the 
volume  called  "  Voyages  and  Discoveries  of  the  Companions 
of  Columbus  "  carried  on  the  study  in  the  same  spirit ;  be 
tween  the  two  came  a  chronicle  of  the  "Conquest  of 


28  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Granada"  and  a  year  later  "The  Alhambra,"  his  master 
piece  in  this  field.  Irving  found  in  the  old  Spanish  tradi 
tion  a  theme  fragrant  with  romance,  rich  and  scintillant  in 
color,  and  lending  itself  admirably  to  his  peculiar  method  of 
imaginative  interpretation.  Upon  a  framework  of  history 
he  weaves  a  succession  of  vivid  scenes  of  stately  and  pathetic 
personages  and  eloquent  descriptions  until  the  whole  glows 
like  a  great  Oriental  rug.  Fact  and  fancy  are  both  in  the 
woof  of  the  texture,  but  the  magic  of  the  narrator  makes  it 
all  a  wonder  tale,  befitting  the  splendor  of  that  melancholy, 
yet  lovely  palace,  memorial  of  a  proud,  unhappy  race. 

Directly  after  the  publication  of  "  The  Alhambra  "  Wash 
ington  Irving  returned  to  his  native  land,  a  man  well  along 
in  years  and  in  the  full  summer  of  his  reputation,  an  Ameri 
can  citizen  who  had  been  courted  by  society  abroad  and 
publicly  honored  there.  He  had  received  a  Royal  Society 
medal  and  an  LL.D.  from  Oxford.  It  was  natural  that  his 
fellow-Americans  should  have  received  him  with  acclaim, 
for  he  was  their  one  author  to  be  recognized  as  an  impor 
tant  figure  in  letters  by  transatlantic  critics.  In  honoring 
him  Americans  honored  themselves. 

He  made  a  tour  of  the  southeast  and  was  greeted  every 
where  with  enthusiastic  admiration.  Then  ke  settled  down 
in  the  pleasant  cottage  on  the  Hudson,  at  Tarrytown,  called 
Sunnyside,  as  if  in  recognition  of  the  cheery  nature  of  its 
master ;  a  dwelling  which  has  now  become  one  of  the  his 
toric  haunts  and  literary  shrines  of  the  land.  This  Hudson 
River  residence  was  the  realization  of  Irving's  often  ex 
pressed  desire  for  a  retiring  and  home  place  upon  the  banks 
of  a  stream,  to  whose  very  name  he  has  lent  a  new  loveli 
ness.  There  has  been  talk  of  late  of  acquiring  Sunnyside  as 
a  memorial  which  the  people  of  the  United  States  may  visit ; 


Irving  29 

if  it  were  feasible,  this  would  be  wise,  since  it  is  by  these 
signs  and  tokens  of  our  great  men  that  a  people's  self- 
respect  and  instinct  for  hero-worship  and  patriotism  are  kept 
alive.  Here,  for  the  remainder  of  his  life,  a  term  of  a  quarter 
century  or  more,  he  resided,  save  for  a  break  of  four  years, 
when  in  1842  he  went  abroad  again  to  represent  the  United 
States  at  the  Court  of  Spain  —  a  selection  peculiarly  fitting  in 
view  of  his  writings  on  the  past  and  present  of  that  land. 
He  filled  the  post  to  the  signal  satisfaction  of  both  countries, 
his  social  tact  of  course  standing  him  in  good  stead.  Irving's 
life  at  Tarrytown  was  a  genial  one;  friends  and  relatives 
visited  him,  and  he  often  was  seen  in  the  streets  of  New 
York,  the  picture  of  a  well-to-do,  benignant  gentleman  of 
the  old  school,  with  a  touch  of  the  quaintness  of  the  elder 
days  in  garb  and  carriage.  His  disposition  seems  to  have 
been  a  happy  mingling  of  affability  and  dignity.  When  the 
farewell  dinner  to  Charles  Dickens  was  given  in  New  York 
City,  upon  the  occasion  of  the  Englishman's  visit  to  the 
United  States,  Irving  presided,  as  naturally  our  representa 
tive  in  letters.  For  long  he  was  the  foremost  of  American 
makers  of  literature. 

His  declining  years  were  smooth  and  sunny,  for  not  only 
were  Irving's  outward  circumstances  easy,  but  his  was  a  tem 
perament  to  insure  happiness.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  the 
peaceful  Indian  summer  of  his  days  in  contrast  with  the 
belligerent  and  strenuous  career  of  Cooper,  or  the  tragic 
brevity  of  Poe's  end.  Nor  was  his  peace  idleness ;  much 
writing  was  done  in  the  Tarrytown  library,  minor,  to  be  sure, 
for  the  most  part,  but  testifying  that  his  right  hand  had  not 
lost  its  cunning,  and  some  of  it  still  of  the  choice  vintage  of 
his  mid-prime.  His  "Crayon  Miscellany,"  in  which  he 
used  the  old  sobriquet,  embraced  sketches  in  which  his 


jo  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

western  travels  in  the  United  States,  his  English  experience, 
his  Spanish  wanderings  and  his  likings  for  the  Hudson  River 
and  other  native  legends  were  all  levied  upon.  His  contri 
butions  to  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine  were  published  in 
book  form,  and  some  of  them  have  the  flavor  which  is  so 
relishably  Irving's  ;  while  several  important  biographies  were 
also  produced.  One  of  these  was  "  Mahomet  and  His  Suc 
cessors."  Another,  and  better,  the  "  Life  of  Washington," 
was  only  completed  the  year  of  the  author's  death.  The 
first  great  American  had  put  his  hand  in  blessing  on  the  boy 
Irving's  head,  and  the  proud  mother  had  named  the  child 
after  him ;  in  the  fullness  of  time  the  debt  was  thus  repaid. 
The  charming  "Life  of  Goldsmith"  —  the  one  English 
writer  whom  Irving  most  suggests  —  rounds  out  the  list  of 
the  biographies. 

In  1859,  at  the  age  of  seventy-five,  Irving  died  in  his 
country  place,  having  lived  long,  and  to  such  effect  that 
his  place  in  American  literature  is  as  secure,  if  not  so  high, 
as  that  of  any  other  American  writer.  His  personality  had 
always  been  of  a  kind  to  attract  and  hold  friends.  A  con 
nection  wrote  of  his  appearance  :  "  He  had  dark  gray  eyes, 
a  handsome  straight  nose,  a  broad,  high,  full  forehead,  and  a 
small  mouth.  His  smile  was  exceedingly  genial,  lighting  up 
his  whole  face,  and  rendering  it  very  attractive."  In  the 
"Easy  Chair"  of  Harper's  Magazine,  George  William 
Curtis  spoke  thus  of  the  impression  made  upon  him  by  Irving 
late  in  life  :  "  He  might  have  been  seen  on  an  autumnal  after 
noon  tripping  with  an  elastic  step  along  Broadway  with 
low  quartered  shoes  neatly  tied,  and  a  Talma  cloak,  a 
short  garment  that  hangs  from  the  shoulders  like  the  cape 
of  a  coat.  There  was  a  chirping,  cheery,  old-school  air  in 
his  appearance  which  was  undeniably  Dutch,  and  most  har- 


Irving  31 

raonious  with  the  associations  of  his  writings.  He  seemed, 
indeed,  to  have  stepped  out  of  his  own  books ;  and  the 
cordial  grace  and  humor  of  his  address,  if  he  stopped  for 
a  passing  chat,  were  delightfully  characteristic." 

He  had  prospered  in  all  ways.  He  had  earned  more  than 
$200,000  by  his  pen,  a  sum  rarely  equaled  even  in  these 
better-paid  times.  He  had  seen,  ere  he  passed  away,  a 
complete  and  handsome  definitive  edition  of  his  work,  a 
practical  testament  to  his  importance  as  a  writer.  A 
bachelor  throughout  his  life,  he  had  been  cherished  and 
loved  by  countless  friends  in  several  lands ;  and  his  readers 
he  could  number  by  tens  of  thousands.  As  near  as  a  mor 
tal  may,  Washington  Irving  had  lived  a  life  that  was  blame 
less  and  beautiful. 

It  would  be  the  impulse  of  a  false  patriotism  to  represent 
him  as  in  the  front  rank  of  the  writers  of  the  world;  but  he 
is  a  very  distinctive,  charming,  and  important  figure  in  our 
native  literary  development ;  so  much  an  artist,  and  so 
wholesomely  good  a  man,  that  however  literary  fashions 
may  change,  he  cannot  be  ignored.  He  does  not  loom 
so  large  in  the  modern  gaze  as  he  did  at  the  time  of  his 
death ;  but  this  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  a  great 
deal  has  since  been  accomplished,  that  a  group  of  remark 
able  New  England  writers  has  since  come  and  gone. 
Although  Irving  was  sometimes  attacked  by  contemporary 
criticism  for  his  lack  of  moral  earnestness,  his  tone  and 
influence  were  perfectly  sound  and  sweet.  Nor  is  he  to  be 
blamed  for  being  imitative  for  the  excellent  reason  that  at 
the  time  he  wrote,  American  literature  was  inevitably  nearer 
in  spirit  and  tradition  to  the  parent  British  than  it  is  at  the 
present  time.  It  is  saner  criticism  to  draw  attention  to  the 
remarkable  degree  in  which  Washington  Irving,  despite  his 


32  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

period,  his  obvious  sympathies  with  the  English  literary  past 
and  the  English  models  he  frankly  followed,  did  nevertheless 
retain  the  hall-mark  of  a  truly  native  quality.  It  is  a  com 
fort  to  come  into  contact  with  so  healthy  a  personality  as  is 
revealed  alike  in  the  life  and  the  literary  work  of  this  first 
of  our  large  and  worthy  makers  of  American  letters. 


THE   STOUT  GENTLEMAN 

A  STAGECOACH  ROMANCE 
11  I'll  cross  it,  though  it  blast  me !  "  —  Hamlet 

It  was  a  rainy  Sunday,  in  the  gloomy  month  of  November. 
I  had  been  detained,  in  the  course  of  a  journey,  by  a  slight  in 
disposition,  from  which  I  was  recovering ;  but  was  still  feverish, 
and  obliged  to  keep  within  doors  all  day,  in  an  inn  of  the  small 
town  of  Derby.  A  wet  Sunday  in  a  country  inn  !  —  whoever 
has  had  the  luck  to  experience  one  can  alone  judge  of  my  situa 
tion.  The  rain  pattered  against  the  casements ;  the  bells  tolled 
for  church  with  a  melancholy  sound.  I  went  to  the  windows, 
in  quest  of  something  to  amuse  the  eye ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  I 
had  been  placed  completely  out  of  the  reach  of  all  amusement. 
The  windows  of  my  bedroom  looked  out  among  tiled  roofs  and 
stacks  of  chimneys,  while  those  of  my  sitting-room  commanded 
a  full  view  of  the  stable  yard.  I  know  of  nothing  more  calcu 
lated  to  make  a  man  sick  of  this  world,  than  a  stable  yard  on  a 
rainy  day.  The  place  was  littered  with  wet  straw,  that  had  been 
kicked  about  by  travelers  and  stable  boys.  In  one  corner  was 
a  stagnant  pool  of  water,  surrounding  an  island  of  muck ;  there 
were  several  half-drowned  fowls  crowded  together  under  a  cart, 
among  which  was  a  miserable,  crestfallen  cock,  drenched  out  of 
all  life  and  spirit;  his  drooping  tail  matted,  as  it  were,  into  a 
single  feather,  along  which  the  water  trickled  from  his  back; 
near  the  cart  was  a  half-dozing  cow  chewing  the  cud,  and  stand 
ing  patiently  to  be  rained  on,  with  wreaths  of  vapor  rising  from 


Irving  33 

her  reeking  hide ;  a  wall-eyed  horse,  tired  of  the  loneliness  of 
the  stable,  was  poking  his  spectral  head  out  of  a  window,  with 
the  rain  dripping  on  it  from  the  eaves ;  an  unhappy  cur,  chained 
to  a  dog  house  hard  by,  uttered  something  every  now  and  then, 
between  a  bark  and  a  yelp ;  a  drab  of  a  kitchen  wench  tramped 
backwards  and  forwards  through  the  yard  in  pattens,  looking  as 
sulky  as  the  weather  itself;  everything,  in  short,  was  comfortless 
and  forlorn,  excepting  a  crew  of  hardened  ducks,  assembled  like 
boon  companions  round  a  puddle,  and  making  a  riotous  noise 
over  their  liquor. 

I  was  lonely  and  listless,  and  wanted  amusement.  My  room 
soon  became  insupportable.  I  abandoned  it,  and  sought  what  is 
technically  called  the  travelers1  room.  This  is  a  public  room 
set  apart  at  most  inns  for  the  accommodation  of  a  class  of  way 
farers  called  travelers,  or  riders;  a  kind  of  commercial  knights- 
errant,  who  are  incessantly  scouring  the  kingdom  in  gigs,  on 
horseback,  or  by  coach.  They  are  the  only  successors  that  I 
know  of,  at  the  present  day,  to  the  knights-errant  of  yore.  They 
lead  the  same  kind  of  roving,  adventurous  life,  only  changing  the 
lance  for  a  driving  whip,  the  buckler  for  a  pattern  card,  and  the 
coat  of  mail  for  an  upper  Benjamin.  Instead  of  vindicating 
the  charms  of  peerless  beauty,  they  rove  about  spreading  the 
fame  and  standing  of  some  substantial  tradesman  or  manufac 
turer,  and  are  ready  at  any  time  to  bargain  in  his  name ;  it  being 
the  fashion  nowadays  to  trade,  instead  of  fight,  with  one  an 
other.  As  the  room  of  the  hostel,  in  the  good  old  fighting  times, 
would  be  hung  round  at  night  with  the  amor  of  wayworn  war 
riors,  such  as  coats  of  mail,  falchions,  and  yawning  helmets ;  so 
the  travelers'  room  is  garnished  with  the  harnessing  of  their 
successors,  with  box  coats,  whips  of  all  kinds,  spurs,  gaiters,  and 
oilcloth-covered  hats. 

I  was  in  hopes  of  finding  some  of  these  worthies  to  talk  with, 
but  was  disappointed.  There  were,  indeed,  two  or  three  in  the 
room;  but  I  could  make  nothing  of  them.  One  was  just  finish 
ing  his  breakfast,  quarreling  with  his  bread  and  butter,  and 
huffing  the  waiter ;  another  buttoned  on  a  pair  of  gaiters,  with 
many  execrations  at  Boots  for  not  having  cleaned  his  shoes 


34  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

well ;  a  third  sat  drumming  on  the  table  with  his  fingers,  and 
looking  at  the  rain  as  it  streamed  down  the  window  glass ;  they 
all  appeared  infected  by  the  weather,  and  disappeared,  one  after 
the  other,  without  exchanging  a  word. 

I  sauntered  to  the  window,  and  stood  gazing  at  the  people 
picking  their  way  to  church,  with  petticoats  hoisted  mid-leg  high, 
and  dripping  umbrellas.  The  bell  ceased  to  toll,  and  the  streets 
became  silent.  I  then  amused  myself  with  watching  the  daugh 
ters  of  a  tradesman  opposite ;  who,  being  confined  to  the  house 
for  fear  of  wetting  their  Sunday  finery,  played  off  their  charms 
at  the  front  windows,  to  fascinate  the  chance  tenants  of  the  inn. 
They  at  length  were  summoned  away  by  a  vigilant,  vinegar-faced 
mother,  and  I  had  nothing  further  from  without  to  amuse  me. 

What  was  I  to  do  to  pass  away  the  long-lived  day  ?  I  was 
sadly  nervous  and  lonely;  and  everything  about  an  inn  seems 
calculated  to  make  a  dull  day  ten  times  duller.  Old  newspapers, 
smelling  of  beer  and  tobacco  smoke,  and  which  I  had  already 
read  half  a  dozen  times  —  good-for-nothing  books,  that  were 
worse  than  rainy  weather.  I  bored  myself  to  death  with  an  old 
volume  of  the  Lady^s  Magazine.  I  read  all  the  commonplace 
names  of  ambitious  travelers  scrawled  on  the  panes  of  glass ; 
the  eternal  families  of  the  Smiths,  and  the  Browns,  and  the  Jack- 
sons,  and  the  Johnsons,  and  all  the  other  sons ;  and  I  deciphered 
several  scraps  of  fatiguing  inn-window  poetry  which  I  have  met 
with  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 

The  day  continued  lowering  and  gloomy ;  the  slovenly,  rag 
ged,  spongy  clouds  drifted  heavily  along ;  there  was  no  variety 
even  in  the  rain ;  it  was  one  dull,  continued,  monotonous  patter 
—  patter  —  patter,  excepting  that  now  and  then  I  was  enlivened 
by  the  idea  of  a  brisk  shower,  from  the  rattling  of  the  drops 
upon  a  passing  umbrella. 

It  was  quite  refreshing  (if  I  may  be  allowed  a  hackneyed 
phrase  of  the  day)  when,  in  the  course  of  the  morning,  a  horn 
blew,  and  a  stagecoach  whirled  through  the  street,  with  outside 
passengers  stuck  all  over  it,  cowering  under  cotton  umbrellas, 
and  seethed  together,  and  reeking  with  the  steams  of  wet  box 
coats  and  upper  Benjamins, 


Irving  35 

The  sound  brought  out  from  their  lurking  places  a  crew  of 
vagabond  boys,  and  vagabond  dogs,  and  the  carroty-headed 
hostler,  and  that  nondescript  animal  ycleped  Boots,  and  all  the 
other  vagabond  race  that  infest  the  purlieus  of  an  inn ;  but  the 
bustle  was  transient ;  the  coach  again  whirled  on  its  way ;  and 
boy  and  dog,  and  hostler  and  Boots,  all  slunk  back  again  to  their 
holes ;  the  street  again  became  silent,  and  the  rain  continued  to 
rain  on.  In  fact,  there  was  no  hope  of  its  clearing  up ;  the  barom 
eter  pointed  to  rainy  weather ;  mine  hostess'  tortoise-shell  cat  sat 
by  the  fire  washing  her  face,  and  rubbing  her  paws  over  her  ears  ; 
and,  on  referring  to  the  almanac,  I  found  a  direful  prediction  stretch 
ing  from  the  top  of  the  page  to  the  bottom  through  the  whole 
month,  "  expect  —  much  —  rain  —  about  —  this  —  time." 

I  was  dreadfully  hipped.  The  hours  seemed  as  if  they  would 
never  creep  by.  The  very  ticking  of  the  clock  became  irksome. 
At  length  the  stillness  of  the  house  was  interrupted  by  the  ring 
ing  of  a  bell.  Shortly  after,  I  heard  the  voice  of  a  waiter  at 
the  bar:  "The  stout  gentleman  in  No.  13  wants  his  breakfast. 
Tea  and  bread  and  butter  with  ham  and  eggs ;  the  eggs  not  to 
be  too  much  done." 

In  such  a  situation  as  mine,  every  incident  is  of  importance. 
Here  was  a  subject  of  speculation  presented  to  my  mind,  and 
ample  exercise  for  my  imagination.  I  am  prone  to  paint  pictures 
to  myself,  and  on  this  occasion  I  had  some  materials  to  work 
upon.  Had  the  guest  upstairs  been  mentioned  as  Mr.  Smith, 
or  Mr.  Brown,  or  Mr.  Jackson,  or  Mr.  Johnson,  or  merely  as 
"the  gentleman  in  No.  13,"  it  would  have  been  a  perfect  blank 
to  me.  I  should  have  thought  nothing  of  it;  but  "The  stout 
gentleman!"  —  the  very  name  had  something  in  it  of  the  pictur 
esque.  It  at  once  gave  the  size;  it  embodied  the  personage  to 
my  mind's  eye,  and  my  fancy  did  the  rest. 

He  was  stout,  or,  as  some  term  it,  lusty ;  in  all  probability, 
therefore,  he  was  advanced  in  life,  some  people  expanding  as 
they  grow  old.  By  his  breakfasting  rather  late,  and  in  his  own 
room,  he  must  be  a  man  accustomed  to  live  at  his  ease,  and 
above  the  necessity  of  early  rising ;  no  doubt  a  round,  rosy,  lusty 
old  gentleman. 


36  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

There  was  another  violent  ringing.  The  stout  gentleman  was 
impatient  for  his  breakfast.  He  was  evidently  a  man  of  impor 
tance  ;  "  well-to-do  in  the  world " ;  accustomed  to  be  promptly 
waited  upon ;  of  a  keen  appetite,  and  a  little  cross  when  hungry ; 
"  perhaps,"  thought  I,  "  he  may  be  some  London  Alderman ;  or 
who  knows  but  he  may  be  a  Member  of  Parliament?" 

The  breakfast  was  sent  up  and  there  was  a  short  interval  of 
silence  ;  he  was,  doubtless,  making  the  tea.  Presently  there  was 
a  violent  ringing,  and  before  it  could  be  answered,  another  ring 
ing  still  more  violent.  "  Bless  me !  what  a  choleric  old  gentle 
man  ! "  The  waiter  came  down  in  a  huff.  The  butter  was 
rancid,  the  eggs  were  overdone,  the  ham  was  too  salt :  —  the 
stout  gentleman  was  evidently  nice  in  his  eating ;  one  of  those 
who  eat  and  growl,  and  keep  the  waiter  on  the  trot,  and  live  in 
a  state  militant  with  the  household. 

The  hostess  got  into  a  fume.  I  should  observe  that  she  was  a 
brisk,  coquettish  woman ;  a  little  of  a  shrew,  and  something  of 
a  slammerkin,  but  very  pretty  withal ;  with  a  nincompoop  for  a 
husband,  as  shrews  are  apt  to  have.  She  rated  the  servants 
roundly  for  their  negligence  in  sending  up  so  bad  a  breakfast, 
but  said  not  a  word  against  the  stout  gentleman;  by  which  I 
clearly  perceived  that  he  must  be  a  man  of  consequence,  entitled 
to  make  a  noise  and  to  give  trouble  at  a  country  inn.  Other 
eggs,  and  ham,  and  bread  and  butter,  were  sent  up.  They 
appeared  to  be  more  graciously  received ;  at  least  there  was  no 
further  complaint. 

I  had  not  made  many  turns  about  the  travelers'  room,  when 
there  was  another  ringing.  Shortly  afterwards  there  was  a  stir 
and  an  inquest  about  the  house.  The  stout  gentleman  wanted 
the  Times  or  the  Chronicle  newspaper.  I  set  him  down,  there 
fore,  for  a  Whig;  or  rather,  from  his  being  so  absolute  and 
lordly  where  he  had  a  chance,  I  suspected  him  of  being  a  Radical. 
Hunt,  I  had  heard,  was  a  large  man ;  "  who  knows,"  thought  I, 
"  but  it  is  Hunt  himself  !  " 

My  curiosity  began  to  be  awakened.  I  inquired  of  the  waiter 
who  was  this  stout  gentleman  that  was  making  all  the  stir ;  but 
I  could  get  no  information :  nobody  seemed  to  know  his  name. 


Irving 


37 


The  landlords  of  bustling  inns  seldom  trouble  their  heads  about 
the  names  or  occupations  of  their  transient  guests.  The  color 
of  a  coat,  the  shape  or  size  of  the  person,  is  enough  to  suggest  a 
traveling  name.  It  is  either  the  tall  gentleman,  or  the  short 
gentleman,  or  the  gentleman  in  black,  or  the  gentleman  in  snuff 
color;  or,  as  in  the  present  instance,  the  stout  gentleman.  A 
designation  of  the  kind  once  hit  on  answers  every  purpose,  and 
saves  all  further  inquiry. 

Rain  —  rain  —  rain!  pitiless,  ceaseless  rain!  No  such  thing 
as  putting  a  foot  out  of  doors,  and  no  occupation  nor  amuse 
ment  within.  By  and  by  I  heard  some  one  walking  overhead. 
It  was  in  the  stout  gentleman's  room.  He  evidently  was  a  large 
man,  by  the  heaviness  of  his  tread  ;  and  an  old  man,  from  his 
wearing  such  creaking  soles.  "He  is  doubtless,"  thought  I, 
"  some  rich  old  square-toes,  of  regular  habits,  and  is  now  taking 
exercise  after  breakfast." 

I  now  read  all  the  advertisements  of  coaches  and  hotels  that 
were  stuck  about  the  mantelpiece.  The  Lady^s  Magazine  had 
become  an  abomination  to  me;  it  was  as  tedious  as  the  day 
itself.  I  wandered  out.  not  knowing  what  to  do,  and  ascended 
again  to  my  room.  I  had  not  been  there  long,  when  there  was 
a  squall  from  a  neighboring  bedroom.  A  door  opened  and 
slammed  violently;  a  chambermaid,  that  I  had  remarked  for 
having  a  ruddy,  good-humored  face, went  down  stairs  in  a  violent 
flurry.  The  stout  gentleman  had  been  rude  to  her. 

This  sent  the  whole  host  of  my  deductions  to  the  deuce  in  a 
moment.  This  unknown  personage  could  not  be  an  old  gentle 
man;  for  old  gentlemen  are  not  apt  to  be  so  obstreperous  to 
chambermaids.  He  could  not  be  a  young  gentleman  ;  for  young 
gentlemen  are  not  apt  to  inspire  such  indignation.  He  must 
be  a  middle-aged  man,  and  confounded  ugly  into  the  bargain, 
or  the  girl  would  not  have  taken  the  matter  in  such  terrible 
dudgeon.  I  confess  I  was  sorely  puzzled. 

In  a  few  minutes  I  heard  the  voice  of  my  landlady.  I  caught 
a  glance  of  her  as  she  came  tramping  upstairs ;  her  face  glow 
ing,  her  cap  flaring,  her  tongue  wagging  the  whole  way.  "  She'd 
have  no  such  doings  in  her  house,  she'd  warrant !  If  gentlemen  did 


3  8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

spend  money  freely,  it  was  no  rule.  She'd  have  no  servant  maids 
of  hers  treated  in  that  way,  when  they  were  about  their  work, 
that's  what  she  wouldn't ! " 

As  I  hate  squabbles,  particularly  with  women,  and  above  all 
with  pretty  women,  I  slunk  back  into  my  room,  and  partly  closed 
the  door ;  but  my  curiosity  was  too  much  excited  not  to  listen. 
The  landlady  marched  intrepidly  to  the  enemy's  citadel,  and 
entered  it  with  a  storm ;  the  door  closed  after  her.  I  heard  her 
voice  in  high  windy  clamor  for  a  moment  or  two.  Then  it 
gradually  subsided,  like  a  gust  of  wind  in  a  garret ;  then  there 
was  a  laugh ;  then  I  heard  nothing  more. 

After  a  little  while,  my  landlady  came  out  with  an  odd  smile 
on  her  face,  adjusting  her  cap,  which  was  a  little  on  one  side. 
As  she  went  downstairs,  I  heard  the  landlord  ask  her  what  was 
the  matter;  she  said,  "  Nothing  at  all,  only  the  girl's  a  fool."  —  I 
was  more  than  ever  perplexed  what  to  make  of  this  unaccountable 
personage,  who  could  put  a  good-natured  chambermaid  in  a 
passion,  and  send  away  a  termagant  landlady  in  smiles.  He 
could  not  be  so  old,  nor  cross,  nor  ugly  either. 

I  had  to  go  to  work  at  his  picture  again,  and  to  paint  him 
entirely  different.  I  now  set  him  down  for  one  of  those  stout 
gentlemen  that  are  frequently  met  with,  swaggering  about  the 
doors  of  country  inns.  Moist,  merry  fellows,  in  Belcher  hand 
kerchiefs,  whose  bulk  is  a  little  assisted  by  malt  liquors.  Men 
who  have  seen  the  world,  and  been  sworn  at  Highgate;  who 
are  used  to  tavern  life ;  up  to  all  the  tricks  of  tapsters,  and 
knowing  in  the  ways  of  sinful  publicans.  Free  livers  on  a 
small  scale ;  who  are  prodigal  within  the  compass  of  a  guinea ; 
who  call  all  the  waiters  by  name,  tousle  the  maids,  gossip  with 
the  landlady  at  the  bar,  and  prose  over  a  pint  of  port,  or  a  glass 
of  negus,  after  dinner. 

The  morning  wore  away  in  forming  these  and  similar  sur 
mises.  As  fast  as  I  wove  one  system  of  belief,  some  movement 
of  the  unknown  would  completely  overturn  it,  and  throw  all  my 
thoughts  again  into  confusion.  Such  are  the  solitary  operations 
of  a  feverish  mind.  I  was,  as  I  have  said,  extremely  nervous ; 
and  the  continual  meditation  on  the  concerns  of  this  invisible 


Irving  39 

personage  began  to  have  its  effect :  —  I  was  getting  a  fit  of  the 
fidgets. 

Dinner-time  came.  I  hoped  the  stout  gentleman  might  dine 
in  the  travelers1  room,  and  that  I  might  at  length  get  a  view 
of  his  person;  but  no  —  he  had  dinner  served  in  his  own  room. 
What  could  be  the  meaning  of  this  solitude  and  mystery  ?  He 
could  not  be  a  Radical ;  there  was  something  too  aristocratical 
in  thus  keeping  himself  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  and 
condemning  himself  to  his  own  dull  company  throughout  a 
rainy  day.  And  then,  too,  he  lived  too  well  for  a  discontented 
politician.  He  seemed  to  expatiate  on  a  variety  of  dishes,  and 
to  sit  over  his  wine  like  a  jolly  friend  of  good  living.  Indeed, 
my  doubts  on  this  head  were  soon  at  an  end ;  for  he  could  not 
have  finished  his  first  bottle  before  I  could  faintly  hear  him 
humming  a  tune ;  and  on  listening,  I  found  it  to  be  "  God  save 
the  King.'1  ?Twas  plain,  then,  he  was  no  Radical,  but  a  faithful 
subject :  one  who  grew  loyal  over  his  bottle,  and  was  ready  to 
stand  by  king  and  constitution,  when  he  could  stand  by  nothing 
else.  But  who  could  he  be  ?  My  conjectures  began  to  run 
wild.  Was  he  not  some  personage  of  distinction,  traveling 
incog.  ?  "  God  knows  !  "  said  I,  at  my  wit's  end ;  "  it  may  be 
one  of  the  royal  family  for  aught  I  know,  for  they  are  all  stout 
gentlemen! " 

The  weather  continued  rainy.  The  mysterious  unknown  kept 
his  room,  and,  as  far  as  I  could  judge,  his  chair,  for  I  did  not 
hear  him  move.  In  the  meantime,  as  the  day  advanced,  the 
travelers1  room  began  to  be  frequented.  Some,  who  had  just 
arrived,  came  in  buttoned  up  in  box  coats ;  others  came  home, 
who  had  been  dispersed  about  the  town.  Some  took  their 
dinners,  and  some  their  tea.  Had  I  been  in  a  different  mood, 
I  should  have  found  entertainment  in  studying  this  peculiar 
class  of  men.  There  were  two  especially,  who  were  regular 
wags  of  the  road,  and  up  to  all  the  standing  jokes  of  travelers. 
They  had  a  thousand  sly  things  to  say  to  the  waiting  maid, 
whom  they  called  Louisa,  and  Ethelinda,  and  a  dozen  other  fine 
names,  changing  the  name  every  time,  and  chuckling  amazingly 
at  their  own  waggery.  My  mind,  however,  had  become  com- 


40  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

pletely  engrossed  by  the  stout  gentleman.  He  had  kept  my 
fancy  in  chase  during  a  long  day,  and  it  was  not  now  to  be 
diverted  from  the  scent. 

The  evening  gradually  wore  away.  The  travelers  read  the 
papers  two  or  three  times  over.  Some  drew  round  the  fire,  and 
told  long  stories  about  their  horses,  about  their  adventures,  their 
overturns,  and  breakings  down.  They  discussed  the  credits  of 
different  merchants  and  different  inns ;  and  the  two  wags  told 
several  choice  anecdotes  of  pretty  chambermaids,  and  kind 
landladies.  All  this  passed  as  they  were  quietly  taking  what 
they  called  their  nightcaps,  that  is  to  say,  strong  glasses  of 
brandy  and  water  and  sugar,  or  some  other  mixture  of  the  kind ; 
after  which  they  one  after  another  rang  for  "  Boots "  and  the 
chambermaid,  and  walked  off  to  bed  in  old  shoes  cut  down  into 
marvelously  uncomfortable  slippers. 

There  was  now  only  one  man  left ;  a  short-legged,  long-bodied, 
plethoric  fellow,  with  a  very  large,  sandy  head.  He  sat  by  him 
self,  with  a  glass  of  port  wine  negus,  and  a  spoon ;  sipping  and 
stirring,  and  meditating  and  sipping,  until  nothing  was  left  but 
the  spoon.  He  gradually  fell  asleep  bolt  upright  in  his  chair, 
with  the  empty  glass  standing  before  him;  and  the  candle 
seemed  to  fall  asleep  too,  for  the  wick  grew  long,  and  black, 
and  cabbaged  at  the  end,  and  dimmed  the  little  light  that  re 
mained  in  the  chamber.  The  gloom  that  now  prevailed  was 
contagious.  Around  hung  the  shapeless,  and  almost  spectral, 
box  coats,  of  departed  travelers,  long  since  buried  in  deep 
sleep.  I  only  heard  the  ticking  of  the  clock,  with  the  deep- 
drawn  breathings  of  the  sleeping  topers,  and  the  drippings  of 
the  rain,  drop  —  drop  —  drop,  from  the  eaves  of  the  house.  The 
church  bells  chimed  midnight.  All  at  once  the  stout  gentleman 
began  to  walk  overhead,  pacing  slowly  backwards  and  forwards. 
There  was  something  extremely  awful  in  all  this,  especially  to 
one  in  my  state  of  nerves.  These  ghastly  greatcoats,  these 
guttural  breathings,  and  the  creaking  footsteps  of  this  mysterious 
being.  His  steps  grew  fainter  and  fainter,  and  at  length  died 
away.  I  could  bear  it  no  longer.  I  was  wound  up  to  the 
desperation  of  a  hero  of  romance.  "Be  he  who  or  what  he 


Irving 


may,"  said  I  to  myself,  "  I'll  have  a  sight  of  him  !  "  I  seized  a 
chamber  candle,  and  hurried  up  to  No.  13.  The  door  stood 
ajar.  I  hesitated  —  I  entered  :  the  room  was  deserted.  There 
stood  a  large,  broad-bottomed  elbow  chair  at  a  table,  on  which 
was  an  empty  tumbler,  and  a  Times  newspaper,  and  the  room 
smelt  powerfully  of  Stilton  cheese. 

The  mysterious  stranger  had  evidently  but  just  retired.  I 
turned  off,  sorely  disappointed,  to  my  room,  which  had  been 
changed  to  the  front  of  the  house.  As  I  went  along  the  corri 
dor,  I  saw  a  large  pair  of  boots,  with  dirty,  waxed  tops,  stand 
ing  at  the  door  of  a  bedchamber.  They  doubtless  belonged  to 
the  unknown  ;  but  it  would  not  do  to  disturb  so  redoubtable  a 
personage  in  his  den;  he  might  discharge  a  pistol,  or  something 
worse,  at  my  head.  I  went  to  bed,  therefore,  and  lay  awake 
half  the  night  in  a  terrible  nervous  state ;  and  even  when  I  fell 
asleep,  I  was  still  haunted  in  my  dreams  by  the  idea  of  the  stout 
gentleman  and  his  wax-topped  boots. 

I  slept  rather  late  the  next  morning,  and  was  awakened  by 
some  stir  and  bustle  in  the  house,  which  I  could  not  at  first 
comprehend ;  until  getting  more  awake,  I  found  there  was  a 
mail  coach  starting  from  the  door.  Suddenly  there  was  a  cry 
from  below,  "  The  gentleman  has  forgot  his  umbrella  !  look  for 
the  gentleman's  umbrella  in  No.  13!"  I  heard  an  immediate 
scampering  of  a  chambermaid  along  the  passage,  and  a  shrill 
reply  as  she  ran,  "  Here  it  is  !  here's  the  gentleman's  umbrella  ! " 

The  mysterious  stranger  then  was  on  the  point  of  setting  off. 
This  was  the  only  chance  I  should  ever  have  of  knowing  him. 
I  sprang  out  of  bed,  scrambled  to  the  window,  snatched  aside 
the  curtains,  and  just  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  rear  of  a  person 
getting  in  at  the  coach  door.  The  skirts  of  a  brown  coat  parted 
behind,  and  gave  me  a  full  view  of  the  broad  disk  of  a  pair  of 
drab  breeches.  The  door  closed  —  "all  right!"  was  the  word 
—  the  coach  whirled  off:  —  and  that  was  all  I  ever  saw  of  the 
stout  gentleman ! 


CHAPTER  III 

COOPER 

IN  comparison  with  other  of  the  early  makers  of  American 
literature  the  reputation  of  James  Fenimore  Cooper  has 
diminished  disproportionately  since  his  death.  In  the  case 
of  his  contemporaries,  Irving  and  Poe,  the  former  has  lost 
nothing  during  the  past  fifty  years,  in  critical  regard ;  the 
latter  has  immeasurably  gained.  Cooper,  on  the  other  hand, 
because  of  the  carelessness  of  his  literary  methods  and  the 
keener  appreciation  in  our  day  of  the  defects  of  technique 
his  work  unquestionably  shows,  has,  as  was  inevitable,  come 
to  be  regarded  largely  as  a  writer  for  boys,  —  by  some  crit 
ics  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  he  hardly  seems 
to  be  taken  seriously ;  there  is  an  effect  of  patronage  in  refer 
ences  to  him.  We  are  speaking,  of  course,  of  the  critical 
view  of  his  work,  the  estimate  which  endeavors  to  give  him 
his  due  place  in  the  bead  roll  of  American  letters.  His 
popularity  with  the  general  reader  is  another  matter. 

Cooper  is  still  secure  in  a  certain  popularity ;  for  the 
breath  of  life  is  in  some  of  his  stories,  and  all  readers  (and 
surely  their  name  is  legion)  who  like  stir  and  change  and  ex 
citement  in  their  fiction  are  likely  to  swear  by  him.  But,  more 
than  this,  Cooper  has  no  small  significance  in  our  American  fic 
tion  because  he  was  a  stalwart  pioneer  in  a  day  when  such  a 
one  had  to  blaze  his  own  trail ;  and  because,  moreover,  he 

42 


Cooper  43 

led  in  the  use  of  distinctively  and  attractively  native  material 
for  his  books.  Certainly  praise  is  due  one  who  had  the  per 
ception  to  see  the  great  value  of  the  Indian  for  the  purposes 
of  literary  art,  and  who  had  the  ability  to  set  him  pictur 
esquely  amidst  his  native  wilds,  to  show  him  hi  his  more 
heroic  aspects,  whether  he  be  bravely  terrible  in  war-paint, 
agile  for  the  hunt,  or  romantic,  as  he  unbends  to  love  beside 
the  far  waters  of  his  wood-girdled  streams.  Cooper  is 
for  these  reasons  still  a  striking  figure  in  the  literary 
Pantheon.  Less  perfect  in  his  art  than  Irving,  he  is  yet 
in  a  sense  a  writer  of  larger  popularity  and  of  more  obvious 
vigor. 

He  was  bora  in  1789,  half  a  dozen  years  after  Irving,  at 
Burlington,  New  Jersey,  where  the  Coopers  were  tempo 
rarily  residing,  while  their  lands  in  New  York  State  were  be 
ing  made  ready  for  occupancy  —  the  region  which  he  was 
again  and  again  to  portray  in  his  romances.  His  mother 
was  of  Swedish  extraction,  and  his  middle  name,  Fenimore, 
which  he  assumed  in  maturity,  being  baptized  simply 
"James,"  was  the  name  of  her  family.  His  father  was  of 
Quaker  stock,  a  congressman,  a  judge,  a  man  of  energy 
and  ability  who,  after  the  American  Revolution,  acquired 
large  tracts  of  land  on  Otsego  Lake  (Otsego  Lake  it  is 
still  written)  hi  New  York  State,  and  according  to  the  cus 
tom  of  the  American  pioneer,  gradually  made  the  region 
habitable,  so  that  the  town  of  Cooperstown  remains  as  a 
monument  of  the  fact.  Thither,  when  the  little  James  was 
a  year  old,  the  family  moved.  In  the  preface  of  his  novel 
"The  Pioneers,"  Cooper  tells  how  "in  1785  the  author's 
father,  who  had  extensive  tracts  of  land  in  this  wilderness, 
arrived  with  a  party  of  surveyors.  At  the  commencement 
of  the  following  year  the  settlement  began.  .  .  .  The 


44  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

author  was  brought  an  infant  into  this  valley,  and  all  his 
first  impressions  were  here  obtained." 

Thus  the  young  ^Cooper  had  an  early  environment  of 
much  moment  to  a  future  romancer.  He  was  reared  on 
the  edge  of  a  wilderness,  fellow  of  the  sun,  the  wind,  and 
the  open.  That  great  good  place,  outdoors,  was  his  play 
ground,  and  the  splendid  primitive  things  of  Nature  were 
at  his  very  threshold.  It  seems  strange  to-day  to  think 
of  central  New  York  State  as  an  unsettled  waste,  a  region 
of  woodsmen,  untilled  land,  and  pathless  forests.  Yet  so  it 
was  a  hundred  and  odd  years  ago,  and  to  the  early  Ameri 
can  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Mohawk  Valley  seemed  infinitely 
more  remote  and  adventurous  than  would  in  our  time  a 
Wyoming  hunting  trip.  Otsego  Hall,  as  the  large  house 
and  estate  of  the  Cooper  family  was  called,  gave  the  lad  a 
stately  home  in  which  a  large  and  easy  manner  of  living  was 
instituted  ;  while  without,  all  the  world  between  sky  and  earth 
was  his  to  roam  in,  and  for  the  first  half  of  his  life,  Cooper  — 
in  sharp  contrast  with  men  of  letters  who  are  of  the  study 
and  the  midnight  lamp  —  passed  his  time  outside  of  confin 
ing  walls.  It  seems  as  if  something  of  the  largeness,  the 
liberal  gift  of  Nature,  entered  into  his  work  because  of  this 
good  fortune  of  home  and  education. 

Cooper's  schooling  was  thus  far  more  of  Nature  than 
from  books.  He  attended  the  village  academy,  to  be 
sure,  but  he  early  absorbed  the  valuable  knowledge  that  is 
to  be  derived  from  contact  with  men  rather  than  from 
books,  from  the  rough  woodsmen  and  trappers  and  guides 
who  frequented  this  region.  Later  his  education  was  con 
tinued  at  Albany,  where  he  was  admitted  into  the  family 
of  an  English  clergyman  who  fitted  him  for  Yale  College, 
which  institution  he  entered  in  1802,  at  the  age  of  thirteen. 


Cooper  45 

His  course  there  was  cut  short  a  year  before  graduation, 
through  inattention  to  his  studies  and  participation  in 
what  is  euphoniously  described  by  all  his  biographers  as  a 
"  frolic  "  — whatever  that  may  mean.  Professor  Lounsbury, 
who  writes  the  life  of  Cooper  for  the  "  American  Men  of 
Letters "  series,  says  that  Cooper  was  fond  in  college  of 
taking  long  tramps  in  the  picturesque  country  about  New 
Haven ;  and  adds,  with  a  touch  of  humor,  "  but  the  study  of 
scenery,  however  desirable  in  itself,  cannot  easily  be  in 
cluded  in  a  college  curriculum."  It  is  not  likely  that  the 
young  man  left  Yale  with  reluctance. 

Next,  as  preliminary  to  a  naval  career,  for  which  his 
father's  public  position  was  an  aid  in  the  way  of  influence, 
we  find  the  collegian  shipping  before  the  mast  in  1806; 
and  after  a  year  at  sea,  he  was  commissioned  midshipman, 
serving  three  years.  All  this  experience  was  of  rich  value  to 
the  future  writer  of  sea  romances.  But  his  roving  disposi 
tion  led  him  to  make  another  change.  A  furlough  of  twelve 
months  had  been  granted  him,  and  before  it  expired  he 
married  in  January,  i8u,and  resigned  from  the  naval  ser 
vice.  His  wife  was  Miss  De  Lancey  of  an  excellent  Hugue 
not  family  which  had  settled  at  Mamaroneck,  New  York, 
where  the  young  people  were  united.  Thence  he  returned 
to  Otsego  County  to  settle  down  near  the  residence  of  his 
family  to  the  life  of  a  country  gentleman,  although  for  many 
years  he  vacillated  between  Cooperstown  and  Westchester, 
the  home  of  his  wife's  family,  with  occasional  residences,  also, 
in  other  towns  of  the  vicinity.  Proud,  irascible,  high-spirited, 
and  at  times  dictatorial,  Cooper  had  the  virtues  which  go 
with  that  temperament :  he  was  honest,  generous,  and  affec 
tionate ;  there  is  no  question  that  his  private  home  life 
was  happy,  and  the  influence  of  his  wife  strong  upon  him 


46  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

for  good  throughout  his  career,  from  the  time  he  left  the 
navy  in  order  that  he  might  be  with  her  steadily. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  prospective  writer,  for  a  number 
of  years  now,  and  indeed  until  he  had  reached  the  age  of 
thirty,  gave  his  full  attention  to  building,  planting,  draining, 
and  stock  raising,  with  no  thought  of  turning  to  literature. 

The  story  of  his  taking  up  the  pen  is  interesting.  He 
was  reading  an  English  novel  of  society  to  his  wife,  one  day, 
and,  not  liking  it,  remarked  to  her  that  he  could  do  better 
himself.  She  challenged  him  to  prove  his  word.  He  wrote 
"  Precaution,"  which  appeared  in  1820  in  New  York  City, 
so  badly  printed  that  what  merit  it  had  was  obscured.  It 
was  a  failure,  and  gave  no  hint  of  Cooper's  real  powers ;  but 
the  next  year,  when  he  was  urged  by  his  friends  to  try  an 
American  theme,  he  produced  the  Revolutionary  story 
"  The  Spy,"  with  little  hope  that  it  would  be  well  received, 
and  consequently  with  a  rather  languid  interest  in  its  fate. 
But  within  a  few  months  its  success  was  assured,  and  Cooper 
was  fairly  launched  as  a  fictionist.  Now  he  did  the  wisest 
possible  thing;  he  bethought  him  of  investing  the  Otsego 
Lake  region  he  knew  so  well  with  a  romantic  charm  by 
weaving  it  into  a  tale  of  adventure.  He  wrote  "  The  Pio 
neers,"  in  which  Leatherstocking,  the  famous  Natty  Bumpo, 
who  was  to  be  the  hero  of  his  finest  series  of  books,  first 
appeared ;  wrote  it  to  please  himself,  he  declared,  but  also 
pleasing  the  public  and  confirming  his  reputation.  And 
that  same  year  he  also  produced  the  stirring  sea  tale  "  The 
Pilot,"  in  which  again  he  drew  upon  his  own  experiences  of 
the  life  described.  Hereafter  followed  in  rapid  succession, 
and  with  a  marvelous  fecundity  of  invention  and  quick  pro 
duction,  the  long  series  of  fiction  which  has  given  Cooper's 
name  more  than  national  fame. 


Cooper  47 

He  was  an  improviser,  like  Scott  or  Dumas,  pouring  out 
from  a  full  mind  and  memory  a  wealth  of  incident,  scene, 
and  character ;  revising  little,  hasty,  careless,  but  possessed 
of  a  genuine  vitality,  a  natural  story-teller  in  a  day  uncriti 
cal  of  technique  but  as  well  aware  when  it  got  hold  of  a 
good  story  as  is  our  own.  The  historical  novel  Scott  had 
already  made  popular ;  there  was  no  rivalry  in  America  in 
the  making  of  Cooper's  particular  kind  of  fiction.  The 
public  was  eager  for  what  Cooper  had  to  give,  and  he  gave  it 
many  years,  prodigally,  out  of  a  horn  of  plenty.  During 
one  decade,  that  from  184010  1850,  he  produced  seventeen 
novels.  By  the  time  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans "  was 
printed,  in  1826,  Cooper  had  fully  revealed  his  quality;  for 
in  this  novel  Leatherstocking  is  seen  in  mid-manhood, 
whereas  in  "The  Pioneers"  he  is  an  old  man  —  hardly  more 
than  a  preliminary  sketch.  In  this  later  story  he  rises  into 
epic  dignity,  while  in  the  remaining  volumes  of  the  world- 
famous  series  he  is  further  developed  in  the  different  stages 
of  his  career,  until  he  stands  forth  a  full-length  portrait  for 
the  admiration  of  a  world  of  readers.  The  typical  Indians, 
too,  Uncas  and  Chingachgook,  come  into  prominence  and  are 
so  limned  that  Cooper's  conception  of  their  race  is  attract 
ively  presented  to  his  audience. 

Without  attempting  here  to  follow  one  by  one  the  many 
books  written  by  this  hale,  up-country  gentleman  for  some 
thirty  years,  the  remaining  events  of  his  life  may  be  briefly 
noted.  In  1822,  after  the  success  of  his  first  book,  Cooper 
felt  the  necessity  of  removing  his  residence  to  New  York 
City.  If  he  was  to  continue  author,  a  city  residence  was 
desirable,  in  view  of  the  slowness  of  mail  carriage,  transpor 
tation,  and  the  like.  Hence  he  lived  in  New  York  for  some 
years.  That  this  city  became  in  the  early  half  of  the  nine- 


48  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

teenth  century  a  literary  center  is  due  more  than  anything 
else  to  two  great  men  of  letters,  Irving  and  Cooper.  Others, 
contemporary  and  later,  like  Paulding,  Willis,  Halleck,  and 
Drake  were  satellites  to  these  suns ;  Bryant's  work,  although 
part  of  it  was  done  as  a  contemporary  of  the  two  elder  men,  was 
projected  so  far  forward  in  time  that  he  is  naturally  to  be  viewed 
with  the  later  New  England  group.  The  Knickerbocker 
school  of  American  literature  made  New  York  famed  before 
Boston  acquired  its  literary  supremacy  a  generation  afterward. 
Cooper  lived  in  the  metropolis  until  1826,  when  he  went 
abroad  with  his  family  (the  manage,  including  servants,  num 
bered  ten  persons)  as  our  consul  at  Lyons  (1826  to  1829), 
his  foreign  residence  taking  up  a  period  of  over  seven  years ; 
he  did  not  return  to  this  country  until  1833.  After  his  term 
as  consul  had  expired  he  spent  the  time  in  traveling,  mostly 
in  France  and  Italy.  He  had  already  made  large  sums  by 
his  writings,  and  besides,  Cooper's  personal  property  placed 
him  in  easy  circumstances.  While  he  sought  no  social  dis 
tinction  when  abroad,  he  could  not  hide  his  light  under  a 
bushel,  and  once  discovered,  had  his  full  share  of  lionizing. 
He  liked  Italy  best  of  all  (as  did  Hawthorne  afterward),  and 
with  his  usual  outspokenness  and  lack  of  tact,  drew  many 
comparisons  between  the  British  (as  well  as  the  Americans) 
and  the  Italian  and  French,  to  the  former's  disadvantage. 
Henry  Clay,  then  Secretary  of  State,  had  given  him  this  offi 
cial  post  at  Cooper's  request  •  it  involved  few  duties,  and  no 
salary  was  attached.  Cooper  desired  it  that  he  might  not, 
on  leaving  his  native  land  for  so  long  a  period,  seem  to  be 
unpatriotic.  And  let  it  be  said  here,  and  with  emphasis,  that 
Cooper  all  his  life,  and  in  all  his  utterances,  was  a  sturdy 
patriot,  although  he  was  often  misunderstood  in  his  remarks 
about  his  country,  as  was  Lowell  after  him. 


Cooper  49 

The  reference  to  Cooper's  left-handed  compliments  on 
his  countrymen  leads  to  a  word  concerning  the  least  pleas 
ant  aspect  of  his  character.  He  was  perpetually  in  hot 
water  because  of  irascible  temper,  unnecessary  frankness,  a 
touchy  insistence  on  his  rights,  a  failure  to  see  that  to  do  a 
right  thing  in  a  wrong  way  sometimes  plays  more  havoc  than 
the  reverse.  At  his  country  places  he  quarreled  with  his 
neighbors  over  boundary  lines ;  his  libel  cases  with  news 
papers  (which,  by  the  bye,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  winning) , 
from  the  Otsego  Republican  up  to  the  New  York  Tribune, 
were  frequent  and  notorious ;  and  his  attacks  upon  the  United 
States  for  its  various  sins  of  omission  and  commission  inevi 
tably  aroused  much  hostility.  Cooper  while  abroad  only 
attacked  false  Americans  who  were  apologetic  of  their  native 
land  (early  examples  of  Anglo  or  other  phobia)  j  the  warm 
hearted  patriotism  under  his  words  was  evident  enough.  But 
no  sooner  had  he  returned,  than  he  began  to  stir  up  trouble 
by  rushing  into  print  at  the  slightest  provocation,  to  answer 
charges  and  criticisms  real  and  imagined.  He  was  at  this 
time  greatly  respected  and  admired  for  what  he  had  done 
for  American  literature,  and,  indeed,  personally;  but  he 
deliberately  clouded  this  sentiment  by  his  course  of  action. 
The  foolishness  of  this  is  apparent  but,  as  Professor  Louns- 
bury  puts  it,  "  The  one  thing  Cooper  could  not  do  was  to 
remain  quiet."  He  had  not  grasped  the  fundamental  truth 
that  it  is  always  a  mistake  to  answer  a  newspaper.  The  year 
after  his  arrival  he  published  the  "  Letter  to  His  Country 
men  "  which  added  vastly  to  his  unpopularity  by  its  injudi- 
ciousness  in  scoring  newspapers,  political  parties,  and  sundry 
persons  who  had  criticised  his  work.  In  short,  no  man  in 
the  history  of  American  literature,  whose  character  was  really 
so  fine  and  high,  did  so  many  ill-advised  things.  For  the 


50  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

remainder  of  his  days  he  was  at  loggerheads  with  the  nation, 
in  matters  social,  political,  and  literary.  Poor  fiction,  like  the 
satiric  story  "The  Monikins  "  (to  name  but  one),  was  writ 
ten,  and  also  a  vast  deal  of  controversial  matter  which  was 
simply  labor  thrown  away,  or  worse.  It  is  sad  to  see  so  great 
a  writer,  so  good  a  man,  thus  dissipating  his  energy  and 
injuring  his  name. 

Cooper  resided,  during  these  final,  stormy  years  of  his 
strenuous  life,  alternately  in  New  York  City  and  Coopers- 
town.  He  had  always  been  of  a  vigorous  habit  of  body, 
but  in  the  autumn  of  1851  dropsy  developed,  and  he  died 
peacefully  at  Cooperstown,  almost  exactly  sixty-two  years 
of  age ;  in  the  spring  he  had  become  a  communicant  of  the 
Episcopalian  Church,  and  was  confirmed  only  a  couple  of 
months  before  his  death  by  Bishop  De  Lancey,  his  brother- 
in-law.  His  property  was  found  to  be  impaired,  but  upon 
its  settlement  a  competence  remained  to  the  family.  His 
wife,  however,  passed  away  only  four  months  after  him ;  in 
death  they  were  not  long  divided.  It  is  pleasant  to  reflect 
that  whatever  the  stress  and  struggle  of  his  public  career, 
his  home  ties  and  relations  were  almost  ideal.  The  Cooper 
estate  at  Cooperstown  is  no  longer  intact;  the  house  was 
burned  many  years  ago,  and  the  land  has  been  parceled 
out  and  sold  for  various  purposes. 

The  romance  upon  American  soil  begins  with  James 
Fenimore  Cooper.  He  looked  across  the  water  and  saw 
that  Scott,  then  in  the  midst  of  the  Waverley  novels,  was 
achieving  success  with  the  historical  romance ;  and  he  con 
ceived  the  possibility  of  applying  the  same  method  to  local 
conditions.  Full  praise  should  be  granted  him  for  this 
feat.  Beginning  to  write  comparatively  late  in  life,  he  pro 
duced  upwards  of  thirty  novels,  and  his  work  has  all  the 


Cooper  5 1 

faults  as  well  as  merits  of  the  rapid  and  hasty  \\Titer. 
Cooper's  literary  habits  (like  those  of  Scott)  were  in  con 
trast  with  the  present  method  of  careful  technique  ;  the 
latter-day  writer  carefully  constructs  his  work,  broods  over 
first  drafts,  rewrites,  polishes,  and  makes  perfect.  But 
spontaneity,  gusto,  a  vital  effect  of  movement  and  color, 
Cooper  certainly  possesses.  His  reputation  now  rests  most 
firmly  upon  his  sea  tales — he  wrote  a  dozen  nautical  stories  — 
and,  above  all,  upon  the  quintette  of  Leatherstocking  tales  : 
"  Deerslayer,"  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,"  "  Pathfinder," 
"The  Pioneers,"  and  "The  Prairie,"  —  mentioning  these 
books  in  the  order,  not  of  their  appearance,  but  to  indicate 
the  chronologic  treatment  of  the  life  of  Leatherstocking 
himself. 

Thinking  of  Cooper's  whole  work  in  fiction,  we  may  sub 
tract  from  what  is  of  real  interest  to-day  a  number  of  pieces 
of  fiction  in  which  his  social  or  political  views  were  allowed 
to  injure  the  pure  story  interest,  to  dull  the  creative  quality 
of  his  work.  We  mean  such  stories  as  "  Homeward  Bound  " 
and  "  Home  as  Found,"  to  mention  but  two.  His  historical 
novels,  while  as  a  group  they  are  inferior  to  the  Leather- 
stocking  series,  contain  such  sterling  things  as  "  The  Spy," 
in  which  Harvey  Birch,  the  peddler  patriot  of  the  Revolu 
tion,  is  one  of  his  best-remembered  figures.  These  stories 
range  in  theme  from  the  time  of  Columbus  to  that  of 
Colonial  days,  or  of  the  Revolution.  The  sea  stories,  be 
sides  "  The  Pilot,"  in  which  Long  Tom  Coffin,  the  Nantucket 
whaler,  has  remained  one  of  Cooper's  favorite  creations,  and 
"  Red  Rover,"  certainly  a  vivid  tale  of  the  sea,  include  in 
"  The  Water  Witch  "  and  "  Wing  and  Wing  "  at  least  two 
more  of  excellent  quality.  Of  Cooper's  nautical  tales  in 
general  it  may  be  said  that  they  are  spiritedly  realistic, 


j  2  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

bearing  the  marks  of  first-hand  observation  on  every  page. 
"  The  Pilot "  awoke  the  enthusiasm  of  a  seasoned  mariner 
when  Cooper  read  some  of  it  to  him,  and  it  is  conceded  to 
be  superior,  in  its  liveliness  and  truth,  to  Scott's  "  The  Pi 
rate/'  in  friendly  emulation  of  which  it  was  written  ;  in  this 
case  Cooper  knew  his  subject  better  than  could  Scott.  Yet, 
although  it  will  not  do  to  refer  to  Cooper  as  the  creator 
of  Leatherstocking  and  nothing  else,  it  may  be  said  that  to 
have  added  one  such  permanent  type  to  fiction  is  a  suffi 
cient  achievement  for  any  artist. 

No  shift  of  literary  fashion  or  stricter  demands  of  art  will 
prevent  Cooper's  Leatherstocking  tales  and  sea  tales  from 
being  read  and  liked.  Many  of  his  stories  will  always 
attract  their  audience.  But  certain  defects  all  of  Cooper's 
fiction  possesses.  The  carelessness  of  his  method  is  be 
trayed  in  many  inaccuracies,  in  his  lack  of  what  to-day  we 
call  realism.  He  makes  his  characters  do  impossible  things, 
and  say  what  they  never  would  or  could  say,  in  view  of  what 
they  are :  Leatherstocking  performs  miracles  of  marksman 
ship  that  no  sportsman  can  accept;  he  speaks  on  one  page 
in  the  uncouth  dialect  of  the  trapper,  on  another  in  the  best 
literary  English.  Again,  the  author's  women  are  as  a  rule 
little  more  than  figureheads,  lacking  variety  and  reality. 
His  treatment  of  love  is  conventional,  and  to  us  now  often 
seems  mawkish  and  sentimental;  it  lacks  fervor  and  red 
blood.  Cooper  was  far  more  successful  in  the  portrayal  of 
men.  For  another  and  graver  charge,  in  the  portraiture 
of  the  Indian  as  a  type,  this  novelist  has  aroused  a  con 
troversy  which  is  likely  always  to  exist.  That  Cooper 
idealized  the  Indian  as  Mrs.  Jackson  ,has  done  later  in  her 
"Ramona,"  there  can  be  little  doubt;  he  sees  him  through 
a  romantic  mist  of  poetry.  LeatherstoCking's  friendliness 


Cooper  53 

with  such  an  old  brave  as  Chingachgook  is  so  charmingly 
fraternal  as  inevitably  to  arouse  skepticism  to-day.  But  there 
is  certainly  some  defense  of  this  treatment.  That  the  result 
is  pleasing,  can  certainly  be  allowed;  something,  too,  may 
be  conceded  to  the  romancer  whose  object  is  to  present, 
in  dealing  with  nature  and  with  human  nature,  the  more 
exceptional  and  heroic.  Much  of  our  national  experience, 
too,  with  the  Indian  since  Cooper's  day,  has  been  disillu 
sioning;  this  puts  us  in  a  more  critical  attitude  toward  a 
representation  which,  in  Cooper's  time,  might  have  been 
acceptable.  At  all  events,  it  is  stimulating  to  encounter 
these  grave,  noble  red  men,  and  to  be  in  their  company. 
Who  shall  say  that  before  the  white  man's  fire-water  had 
begun  to  do  its  work  the  type  did  not  deserve  Cooper's 
praise?  Certainly  it  offered  a  picturesque  theme,  and  one 
that  the  novelist  used  with  great  effect. 

In  construction,  too,  in  the  building  and  climax  of  his 
stories,  Cooper's  haste  and  lack  of  revision  are  often  to  be 
detected.  He  makes  an  impression  of  not  giving  to  his 
fiction  such  proportionate  shaping  as  best  to  serve  the 
interests  of  his  plot.  His  stories  often  seem  to  end 
abruptly,  or  with  things  more  or  less  at  loose  ends ;  some 
times,  strictly  speaking,  they  hardly  seem  to  end  at  all. 
Apparently  he  did  not  see  his  way  through  these  narratives 
when  he  began  them.  The  same  criticism  applies  to  much 
of  the  work  of  Scott,  whose  so-called  "  huddled  endings  " 
have  often  been  pointed  out.  Once  more,  the  style  in  which 
Cooper  wrote  his  books,  although  it  has  marked  merits 
of  picturesqueness  and  power,  is,  to  our  ears  to-day,  at 
times  pompous,  heavy,  even  wooden.  Of  course  he  began 
to  write  at  a  time  when  English  expression  was  somewhat 
more  formal  than  it  now  is;  and  of  his  manner  of  handling 


54  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

the  mother  tongue  in  general  it  is  accurate  to  say  that, 
while  he  was  not  a  master  of  style,  he  was  a  very  vigor 
ous,  fluent,  and,  on  occasion,  admirable  writer,  prevailingly 
so  in  description,  and  sometimes  in  dialogue. 

But  it  were  to  convey  a  false  idea  of  Cooper  not  to  hasten 
to  add  that  these  faults  were,  after  all,  swallowed  up  in  his 
very  great  virtues.  No  writer  can  hold  readers  nearly  a 
century  unless  he  has  shining  excellences,  and  Cooper  has 
them,  and  in  plenty.  He  can,  for  one  thing,  create  char 
acters  that  live ;  hardly  a  figure  in  the  whole  range  of 
American  fiction  is  better  known,  more  clearly  seen,  than 
Leatherstocking;  and  other  dear  and  familiar  personalities 
have  been  named.  To  create  folk  who  thus  abide  in  the 
affectionate  memory  of  after  times  is  one  of  the  great 
triumphs  of  the  novelist,  perhaps  the  greatest.  Cooper 
showed  himself  a  large  and  noble  man  in  conceiving  such 
a  type  as  Leatherstocking,  with  his  reality  yet  poetry,  his 
love  of  outdoor  life,  of  nature,  his  simple  reverence  and 
faith,  his  shrewdness,  generosity,  strength,  and  sweetness. 
His  life,  in  the  successive  books,  in  a  shifting  environment 
which  takes  him  through  what  was  then  the  far  West, 
carried  on  from  early  manhood  to  his  impressive  death, 
is  the  unique  story  of  a  striking  phase  of  our  civilization  now 
forever  gone ;  the  passing  of  the  pioneer.  It  has  an  epic 
quality. 

Cooper  had  invention  also ;  his  books  are  crowded  full  of 
incident,  action ;  there  is  a  fine  breath  of  adventure  blowing 
through  it  all.  He  loved  "  the  bright  eyes  of  danger,"  as  did 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  in  a  later  generation.  That  is  the 
reason  he  is  loved  of  boys  ;  older  folk  appreciate  his  character- 
drawing  or  his  descriptions,  the  young  overlook  them  or 
skip  them,  but  hang  on  his  hairbreadth  escapes,  his  doings 


Cooper  55 

by  flood  and  field.!  One  might  imagine  that,  because 
Cooper  moves  so  slow  (at  least  to  modern  taste),  stop 
ping  not  seldom  for  grandiloquent  scene  painting  or  for  the 
moral  comment,  young  people  would  have  none  of  him; 
but  they  can  and  do  jump  these  waits  and  come  to  action 
again ;  there  is  always  a  promise  of  something  doing  just 
ahead.  Hence  he  is  popular  with  them.  For  the  more 
mature  reader,  however,  his  descriptions  are  often  among 
the  best  things  he  does,  and  here  is  to  be  found  one  of  his 
chief  merits ;  he  appreciates  and  makes  us  appreciate  the 
native  scenery  as  he  saw  it  in  the  New  York  wilderness. 
The  example  of  his  work  which  follows  this  paper  will 
illustrate  the  point. 

The  final  point  I  would  make  with  regard  to  the  positive 
and  even  splendid  services  of  Cooper  in  our  fiction  is  that 
his  work  was  so  truly  American  at  a  time  when,  to  make  it 
so,  seemed  well-nigh  impossible.  Nobody  would  have  be 
lieved  that  a  man  could  have  found  worthy  themes  for 
romance  in  the  unsettled  wilds  surrounding  his  home ;  yet, 
with  the  true  instinct  of  the  literary  creator,  who  draws 
strength  from  Mother  Earth,  Cooper  turned  his  back  upon 
British  motives  and  methods  (after  writing  the  dull,  unsuc 
cessful  "  Precaution  ")  and,  so  to  say,  struck  off  for  himself 
into  virgin  forests,  across  unforded  rivers,  over  trailless 
plains.  And  he  also  seized  upon  romantic  figures  and 
scenes  in  our  history  wherever  found;  as  where  he  made 
Paul  Jones  the  hero  of  "  The  Pilot,"  and  thus  early  gave  a 
clue  which  writers  on  all  sides  at  present  are  still  acting  upon 
in  producing  native  novels  of  the  Colonial,  Revolutionary, 
and  Civil  War  periods.  There  is  little  danger  of  overesti 
mating  the  merit  of  such  a  bold  taking  of  the  initiative. 

As  Irving  found  a  theme  in  Manhattan  and  the  Hudson 


56  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

River  locality,  so  Cooper  found  it  at  Otsego  Lake  and 
thereabouts ;  both  are  pioneers  of  American  fiction  in  a 
deeper,  better  sense  because  they  did  so,  and  Cooper's  con 
tribution  in  sweep,  mass,  and  persistence,  although  not  in 
pure  art,  was  of  the  two  more  impressive.  The  very  pro- 
lificness  of  his  power  has  in  it  something  admirable ;  he 
wrote  on  the  average  more  than  a  novel  a  year  for  many 
years,  besides  turning  out  an  immense  mass  of  other  writ 
ings  —  historical,  polemic,  religious,  and  political ;  and  this 
from  a  man  who  did  not  begin  to  be  an  author  until  well 
past  his  youth,  and  whose  natural  gifts  and  training  seem  to 
declare  him  to  be  more  fitted  for  some  practical  employ 
ment  or  leadership.  The  salient  qualities  of  his  literary 
work  come  from  this  very  fact  of  his  unliterary  beginning 
and  the  fact  that  he  approached  letters  unconventionally 
through  an  unbeaten  path. 

This  author,  then,  while  he  has  lost  something  with  the 
critical  sifting  out  of  the  years,  still  occupies,  and  will  always 
occupy,  a  worthy  place  in  our  literary  annals.  He  is  a  great 
pioneer  of  American  literature,  and  unquestionably  the 
founder  of  the  long  native  romance  —  as  is  Irving  of  the 
short  tale  or  Poe  of  the  psychologic  tale  of  horror  and  mys 
tery.  Surely  this  is  no  mean  service,  and  with  all  his  faults 
of  art  or  flaws  of  character  there  is  that  which  is  so  whole 
some  in  the  one  and  so  lovable  in  the  other  that  the  critic 
must  always  linger  in  kindness  and  genuine  liking  upon  the 
name  of  James  Fenimore  Cooper. 

RUNNING  THE  GANTLET 
(FROM  "THE  LAST  OF  THE  MOHICANS") 

There  yet  lingered  sufficient  light  in  the  heavens  to  exhibit 
those  bright  openings  among  the  tree-tops,  where  different  paths 


Cooper  57 

left  the  clearings  to  enter  the  depths  of  the  wilderness.  Beneath 
one  of  them  a  line  of  warriors  issued  from  the  woods,  and  ad 
vanced  slowly  toward  the  dwellings.  One  in  front  bore  a  short 
pole,  on  which,  as  it  afterward  appeared,  were  suspended  several 
human  scalps.  The  startling  sounds  that  Duncan  had  heard 
were  what  the  whites  have,  not  inappropriately,  called  the  "  death 
halloo  '' ;  and  each  repetition  of  the  cry  was  intended  to  announce 
to  the  tribe  the  fate  of  an  enemy.  Thus  far  the  knowledge  of 
Heyward  assisted  him  in  the  explanation  ;  and,  as  he  now  knew 
that  the  interruption  was  caused  by  the  unlooked-for  return  of  a 
successful  war  party,  every  disagreeable  sensation  was  quieted  in 
inward  congratulations  for  the  opportune  relief  and  insignificance 
it  conferred  on  himself. 

When  at  the  distance  of  a  few  hundred  feet  from  the  lodges, 
the  newly  arrived  warriors  halted.  The  plaintive  and  terrible 
cry,  which  was  intended  to  represent  equally  the  wailings  of  the 
dead  and  the  triumph  of  the  victors,  had  entirely  ceased.  One 
of  their  number  now  called  aloud  in  words  that  were  far  from 
appalling,  though  not  more  intelligible  to  those  for  whose  ears 
they  were  intended  than  their  expressive  yells.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  convey  a  suitable  idea  of  the  savage  ecstasy  with 
which  the  news  thus  imparted  was  received.  The  whole  encamp 
ment,  in  a  moment,  became  a  scene  of  the  most  violent  bustle 
and  commotion.  The  warriors  drew  their  knives,  and,  flourish 
ing  them,  they  arranged  themselves  in  two  lines,  forming  a  lane 
that  extended  from  the  war  party  to  the  lodges.  The  squaws 
seized  clubs,  axes,  or  whatever  weapon  of  offense  first  offered 
itself  to  their  hands,  and  rushed  eagerly  to  act  their  part  in  the 
cruel  game  that  was  at  hand.  Even  the  children  would  not  be 
excluded :  but  boys,  little  able  to  wield  the  instruments,  tore  the 
tomahawks  from  the  belts  of  their  fathers  and  stole  into  the  ranks, 
apt  imitators  of  the  savage  traits  exhibited  by  their  parents. 

Large  piles  of  brush  lay  scattered  about  the  clearing,  and  a 
wary  and  aged  squaw  was  occupied  in  firing  as  many  as  might 
serve  to  light  the  coming  exhibition.  As  the  flame  arose,  its 
power  exceeded  that  of  the  parting  day,  and  assisted  to  render 
objects  at  the  same  time  more  distinct  and  more  hideous.  The 


58  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

whole  scene  formed  a  striking  picture,  whose  frame  was  composed 
of  the  dark  and  tall  border  of  pines.  The  warriors  just  arrived 
were  the  most  distant  figures.  A  little  in  advance  stood  two 
men,  who  were  apparently  selected  from  the  rest  as  the  principal 
actors  in  what  was  to  follow.  The  light  was  not  strong  enough 
to  render  their  features  distinct,  though  it  was  quite  evident  that 
they  were  governed  by  very  different  emotions.  While  one 
stood  erect  and  firm,  prepared  to  meet  his  fate  like  a  hero,  the 
other  bowed  his  head  as  if  palsied  by  terror  or  stricken  with 
shame.  The  high-spirited  Duncan  felt  a  powerful  impulse  of 
admiration  and  pity  toward  the  former,  though  no  opportunity 
could  offer  to  exhibit  his  generous  emotions.  He  watched  his 
slightest  movement,  however,  with  eager  eyes,  and  as  he  traced 
the  fine  outline  of  his  admirably  proportioned  and  active  frame 
he  endeavored  to  persuade  himself  that  if  the  powers  of  man, 
seconded  by  such  noble  resolution,  could  bear  one  harmless 
through  so  severe  a  trial,  the  youthful  captive  before  him  might 
hope  for  success  in  the  hazardous  race  he  was  about  to  run. 
Insensibly  the  young  man  drew  nigher  to  the  swarthy  lines  of 
the  Hurons,  and  scarcely  breathed,  so  intense  became  his  inter 
est  in  the  spectacle.  Just  then  the  signal  yell  was  given,  and  the 
momentary  quiet  which  had  preceded  it  was  broken  by  a  burst 
of  cries  that  far  exceeded  any  before  heard.  The  most  abject  of 
the  two  victims  continued  motionless,  but  the  other  bounded 
from  the  place  at  the  cry  with  the  activity  and  swiftness  of  a 
deer.  Instead  of  rushing  through  the  hostile  lines,  as  had  been 
expected,  he  just  entered  the  dangerous  defile,  and  before  time 
was  given  for  a  single  blow,  turned  short,  and,  leaping  the  heads 
of  a  row  of  children,  he  gained  at  once  the  exterior  and  safer 
side  of  the  formidable  array.  The  artifice  was  answered  by  a 
hundred  voices  raised  in  imprecations,  and  the  whole  of  the  ex 
cited  multitude  broke  from  their  order  and  spread  themselves 
about  the  place  in  wild  confusion. 

A  dozen  blazing  piles  now  shed  their  lurid  brightness  on  the 
place,  which  resembled  some  unhallowed  and  supernatural  arena, 
in  which  malicious  demons  had  assembled  to  act  their  bloody 
and  lawless  rites.  The  forms  in  the  background  looked  like 


Cooper  59 

unearthly  beings,  gliding  before  the  eye,  and  cleaving  the  air 
with  frantic  and  unmeaning  gestures  ;  while  the  savage  passions 
of  such  as  passed  the  flames,  were  rendered  fearfully  distinct  by 
the  gleams  that  shot  athwart  their  inflamed  visages. 

It  will  easily  be  understood  that,  amid  such  a  concourse  of 
vindictive  enemies,  no  breathing  time  was  allowed  the  fugitive. 
There  was  a  single  moment  when  it  seemed  as  if  he  would  have 
reached  the  forest,  but  the  whole  body  of  his  captors  threw  them 
selves  before  him  and  drove  him  back  into  the  center  of  his  re 
lentless  persecutors.  Turning  like  a  headed  deer,  he  shot,  with 
the  swiftness  of  an  arrow,  through  a  pillar  of  forked  flame,  and 
passing  the  whole  multitude  harmless,  he  appeared  on  the  oppo 
site  side  of  the  clearing.  Here,  too,  he  was  met  and  turned  by 
a  few  of  the  older  and  more  subtle  of  the  Hurons.  Once  more 
he  tried  the  throng,  as  if  seeking  safety  in  its  blindness,  and  then 
several  moments  succeeded,  during  which  Duncan  believed  the 
active  and  courageous  young  stranger  was  lost. 

Nothing  could  be  distinguished  but  a  dark  mass  of  human 
forms  tossed  and  involved  in  inexplicable  confusion.  Arms, 
gleaming  knives,  and  formidable  clubs  appeared  above  them,  but 
the  blows  were  evidently  given  at  random.  The  awful  effect 
was  heightened  by  the  piercing  shrieks  of  the  women  and  the 
fierce  yells  of  the  warriors.  Now  and  then  Duncan  caught  a 
glimpse  of  a  light  form  cleaving  the  air  in  some  desperate  bound, 
and  he  rather  hoped  than  believed  that  the  captive  yet  retained 
the  command  of  his  astonishing  powers  of  activity.  Suddenly 
the  multitude  rolled  backward,  and  approached  the  spot  where 
he  himself  stood.  The  heavy  body  in  the  rear  pressed  upon  the 
women  and  children  in  front,  and  bore  them  to  the  earth.  The 
stranger  reappeared  in  the  confusion.  Human  power  could  not, 
however,  much  longer  endure  so  severe  a  trial.  Of  this  the  cap 
tive  seemed  conscious.  Profiting  by  the  momentary  opening, 
he  darted  from  among  the  warriors,  and  made  a  desperate  and, 
what  seemed  to  Duncan,  a  final  effort  to  gain  the  wood.  As  if 
aware  that  no  danger  was  to  be  apprehended  from  the  young 
soldier,  the  fugitive  nearly  brushed  his  person  in  his  flight.  A 
tall  and  powerful  Huron,  who  had  husbanded  his  forces,  pressed 


60  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

close  upon  his  heels,  and  with  an  uplifted  arm  menaced  a  fatal 
blow.  Duncan  thrust  forth  a  foot,  and  the  shock  precipitated 
the  eager  savage  headlong,  many  feet  in  advance  of  his  intended 
victim.  Thought  itself  is  not  quicker  than  was  the  motion  with 
which  the  latter  profited  by  the  advantage ;  he  turned,  gleamed 
like  a  meteor  again  before  the  eyes  of  Duncan,  and  at  the  next 
moment,  when  the  latter  recovered  his  recollection,  and  gazed 
round  in  quest  of  the  captive,  he  saw  him  quietly  leaning  against 
a  small  painted  post,  which  stood  before  the  door  of  the  principal 
lodge. 

Apprehensive  that  the  part  he  had  taken  in  the  escape  might 
prove  fatal  to  himself,  Duncan  left  the  place  without  delay.  He 
followed  the  crowd,  which  drew  nigh  the  lodges,  gloomy  and  sul 
len,  like  any  other  multitude  that  had  been  disappointed  in  an 
execution.  Curiosity,  or  perhaps  a  better  feeling,  induced  him  to 
approach  the  stranger.  He  found  him,  standing  with  one  arm 
cast  about  the  protecting  post,  and  breathing  thick  and  hard, 
after  his  exertions,  but  disdaining  to  permit  a  single  sign  of  suf 
fering  to  escape.  His  person  was  now  protected  by  immemorial 
and  sacred  usage,  until  the  tribe  in  council  had  deliberated  and 
determined  on  his  fate.  It  was  not  difficult,  however,  to  foretell 
the  result,  if  any  presage  could  be  drawn  from  the  feelings  of 
those  who  crowded  the  place. 

There  was  no  term  of  abuse  known  to  the  Huron  vocabulary 
that  the  disappointed  women  did  not  lavishly  expend  on  the  suc 
cessful  stranger.  They  flouted  at  his  efforts,  and  told  him,  with 
bitter  scoffs,  that  his  feet  were  better  than  his  hands,  and  that 
he  merited  wings,  while  he  knew  not  the  use  of  an  arrow  or  a 
knife.  To  all  this  the  captive  made  no  reply ;  but  was  content 
to  preserve  an  attitude  in  which  dignity  was  singularly  blended 
with  disdain.  Exasperated  as  much  by  his  composure  as  by  his 
good  fortune,  their  words  became  unintelligible,  and  were  suc 
ceeded  by  shrill,  piercing  yells.  Just  then  the  crafty  squaw,  who 
had  taken  the  necessary  precaution  to  fire  the  piles,  made  her 
way  through  the  throng,  and  cleared  a  place  for  herself  in  front 
of  the  captive.  The  squalid  and  withered  person  of  this  hag 
might  well  have  obtained  for  her  the  character  of  possessing  more 


Cooper  6 1 

than  human  cunning.  Throwing  back  her  light  vestment,  she 
stretched  forth  her  long  skinny  arm,  in  derision,  and  using  the 
language  of  the  Lenape,  as  more  intelligible  to  the  subject  of  her 
gibes,  she  commenced,  aloud  :  — 

"  Look  you,  Delaware ! ''  she  said,  snapping  her  fingers  in  his 
face ;  "  your  nation  is  a  race  of  women,  and  the  hoe  is  better 
fitted  to  your  hands  than  the  gun.  Your  squaws  are  the  mothers 
of  deer ;  but  if  a  bear,  or  a  wild  cat,  or  a  serpent,  were  born 
among  you,  ye  would  flee.  The  Huron  girls  shall  make  you  pet 
ticoats,  and  we  will  find  you  a  husband." 

A  burst  of  savage  laughter  succeeded  this  attack,  during  which 
the  soft  and  musical  merriment  of  the  younger  females  strangely 
chimed  with  the  cracked  voice  of  their  older  and  more  malignant 
companion.  But  the  stranger  was  superior  to  all  their  efforts. 
His  head  was  immovable ;  nor  did  he  betray  the  slightest  con 
sciousness  that  any  were  present,  except  when  his  haughty  eye 
rolled  toward  the  dusky  forms  of  the  warriors,  who  stalked  in 
the  background,  silent  and  sullen  observers  of  the  scene. 

Infuriated  at  the  self-command  of  the  captive,  the  woman 
placed  her  arms  akimbo ;  and  throwing  herself  into  a  posture 
of  defiance,  she  broke  out  anew,  in  a  torrent  of  words,  that  no 
art  of  ours  could  commit  successfully  to  paper.  Her  breath  was, 
however,  expended  in  vain ;  for,  although  distinguished  in  her 
nation  as  a  proficient  in  the  art  of  abuse,  she  was  permitted  to 
work  herself  into  such  a  fury  as  actually  to  foam  at  the  mouth, 
without  causing  a  muscle  to  vibrate  in  the  motionless  figure  of 
the  stranger.  The  effect  of  his  indifference  began  to  extend  itself 
to  the  other  spectators :  and  a  youngster  who  was  just  quitting 
the  condition  of  a  boy,  to  enter  the  state  of  manhood,  attempted 
to  assist  the  termagant,  by  flourishing  his  tomahawk  before  their 
victim,  and  adding  his  empty  boasts  to  the  taunts  of  the  woman. 
Then,  indeed,  the  captive  turned  his  face  toward  the  light,  and 
looked  down  on  the  stripling  with  an  expression  that  was  supe 
rior  to  contempt.  At  the  next  moment  he  resumed  his  quiet 
and  reclining  attitude  against  the  post.  But  the  change  of  pos 
ture  had  permitted  Duncan  to  exchange  glances  with  the  firm  and 
piercing  eyes  of  Uncas. 


62  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Breathless  with  amazement,  and  heavily  oppressed  with  the 
critical  situation  of  his  friend,  Heyward  recoiled  before  the  look, 
trembling  lest  its  meaning  might,  in  some  unknown  manner, 
hasten  the  prisoner's  fate.  There  was  not,  however,  any  in 
stant  cause  for  such  an  apprehension.  Just  then  a  warrior 
forced  his  way  into  the  exasperated  crowd.  Motioning  the 
women  and  children  aside  with  a  stern  gesture,  he  took  Uncas 
by  the  arm,  and  led  him  toward  the  door  of  the  council  lodge. 
Thither  all  the  chiefs,  and  most  of  the  distinguished  warriors, 
followed ;  among  whom  the  anxious  Heyward  found  means  to 
enter  without  attracting  any  dangerous  attention  to  himself. 

A  few  minutes  were  consumed  in  disposing  of  those  present 
in  a  manner  suitable  to  their  rank  and  influence  in  the  tribe. 
An  order  very  similar  to  that  adopted  in  the  preceding  interview 
was  observed ;  the  aged  and  superior  chiefs  occupying  the  area 
of  the  spacious  apartment,  within  the  powerful  light  of  a  glaring 
torch,  while  their  juniors  and  inferiors  were  arranged  in  the 
background,  presenting  a  dark  outline  of  swarthy  and  marked 
visages.  In  the  very  center  of  the  lodge,  immediately  under  an 
opening  that  admitted  the  twinkling  light  of  one  or  two  stars, 
stood  Uncas  —  calm,  elevated,  and  collected.  His  high  and 
haughty  carriage  was  not  lost  on  his  captors,  who  often  bent 
their  looks  on  his  person,  with  eyes  which,  while  they  lost  none 
of  their  inflexibility  of  purpose,  plainly  betrayed  their  admiration 
of  the  stranger's  daring. 

The  case  was  different  with  the  individual  whom  Duncan  had 
observed  to  stand  forth  with  his  friend,  previously  to  the  des 
perate  trial  of  speed ;  and  who,  instead  of  joining  in  the  chase, 
had  remained,  through  its  turbulent  uproar,  like  a  cringing 
statue,  expressive  of  shame  and  disgrace.  Though  not  a  hand 
had  been  extended  to  meet  him,  nor  yet  an  eye  had  conde 
scended  to  watch  his  movements,  he  had  also  entered  the  lodge, 
as  though  impelled  by  a  fate  to  whose  decrees  he  submitted, 
seemingly,  without  a  struggle.  Heyward  profited  by  the  first 
opportunity  to  gaze  in  his  face,  secretly  apprehensive  he  might 
find  the  features  of  another  acquaintance ;  but  they  proved  to  be 
those  of  a  stranger,  and,  what  was  still  more  inexplicable,  of  one 


Cooper  63 

who  bore  all  the  distinctive  marks  of  a  Huron  warrior.  Instead 
of  mingling  with  his  tribe,  however,  he  sat  apart,  a  solitary  being 
in  a  multitude,  his  form  shrinking  into  a  crouching  and  abject 
attitude,  as  if  anxious  to  fill  as  little  space  as  possible.  When 
each  individual  had  taken  his  proper  station,  and  silence  reigned 
in  the  place,  the  gray-haired  chief  already  introduced  to  the 
reader  spoke  aloud,  in  the  language  of  the  Lenni-Lenape :  — 

"  Delaware,"  he  said,  "  though  one  of  a  nation  of  women,  you 
have  proved  yourself  a  man.  I  would  give  you  food ;  but 
he  who  eats  with  a  Huron  should  become  his  friend.  Rest 
in  peace  till  the  morning  sun,  when  our  last  words  shall  be 
spoken." 

"  Seven  nights,  and  as  many  days,  have  I  fasted  on  the  trail 
of  the  Hurons,1'  Uncas  coldly  replied;  "the  children  of  the 
Lenape  know  how  to  travel  the  path  of  the  just  without  linger 
ing  to  eat." 

"  Two  of  my  young  men  are  in  pursuit  of  your  companion,11 
resumed  the  other,  without  appearing  to  regard  the  boast  of 
his  captive ;  "  when  they  get  back,  then  will  our  wise  men  say 
to  you,  'Live  or  die.'" 

"  Has  a  Huron  no  ears  ? "  scornfully  exclaimed  Uncas ; 
"twice,  since  he  has  been  your  prisoner,  has  the  Delaware 
heard  a  gun  that  he  knows.  Your  young  men  will  never  come 
back." 

A  short  and  sullen  pause  succeeded  this  bold  assertion.  Dun 
can,  who  understood  the  Mohican  to  allude  to  the  fatal  rifle  of 
the  scout,  bent  forward  in  earnest  observation  of  the  effect  it 
might  produce  on  the  conquerors ;  but  the  chief  was  content 
with  simply  retorting :  — 

"  If  the  Lenape  are  so  skillful,  why  is  one  of  their  bravest 
warriors  here  ?  " 

"He  followed  in  the  steps  of  a  flying  coward,  and  fell  into  a 
snare.  The  cunning  beaver  may  be  caught." 

As  Uncas  thus  replied,  he  pointed  with  his  finger  toward  the 
solitary  Huron,  but  without  deigning  to  bestow  any  other 
notice  on  so  unworthy  an  object.  The  words  of  the  answer  and 
the  air  of  the  speaker  produced  a  strong  sensation  among  his 


64  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

auditors.  Every  eye  rolled  sullenly  toward  the  individual  indi 
cated  by  the  simple  gesture,  and  a  low,  threatening  murmur 
passed  through  the  crowd.  The  ominous  sounds  reached  the 
outer  door  and,  the  women  and  children  pressing  into  the  throng, 
no  gap  had  been  left  between  shoulder  and  shoulder,  that  was 
not  now  filled  with  the  dark  lineaments  of  some  eager  and  curious 
human  countenance. 

In  the  meantime,  the  more  aged  chiefs,  in  the  center,  com 
muned  with  each  other  in  short  and  broken  sentences.  Not  a 
word  was  uttered  that  did  not  convey  the  meaning  of  the 
speaker,  in  the  simplest  and  most  energetic  form.  Again  a  long 
and  deeply  solemn  pause  took  place.  It  was  known,  by  all 
present,  to  be  the  grave  precursor  of  a  weighty  and  important 
judgment.  They  who  composed  the  outer  circle  of  faces  were 
on  tiptoe  to  gaze;  and  even  the  culprit  for  an  instant  forgot 
his  shame  in  a  deeper  emotion,  and  exposed  his  abject  features 
in  order  to  cast  an  anxious  and  troubled  glance  at  the  dark 
assemblage  of  chiefs.  The  silence  was  finally  broken  by  the 
aged  warrior  so  often  named.  He  rose  from  the  earth,  and  mov 
ing  past  the  immovable  form  of  Uncas,  placed  himself  in  a  dig 
nified  attitude  before  the  offender.  At  that  moment,  the 
withered  squaw  already  mentioned  moved  into  the  circle,  in  a 
slow,  sidelong  sort  of  a  dance,  holding  the  torch,  and  muttering 
the  indistinct  words  of  what  might  have  been  a  species  of  incan 
tation.  Though  her  presence  was  altogether  an  intrusion,  it  was 
unheeded.  Approaching  Uncas,  she  held  the  blazing  brand  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  cast  its  red  glare  on  his  person,  and  to  expose 
the  slightest  emotion  of  his  countenance.  The  Mohican  main 
tained  his  firm  and  haughty  attitude ;  and  his  eye,  so  far  from 
deigning  to  meet  her  inquisitive  look,  dwelt  steadily  on  the  dis 
tance,  as  though  it  penetrated  the  obstacles  which  impeded  the 
view,  and  looked  into  futurity.  Satisfied  with  her  examination, 
she  left  him,  with  a  slight  expression  of  pleasure,  and  proceeded 
to  practice  the  same  trying  experiment  on  her  delinquent  country 
man. 

The  young  Huron  was  in  his  war  paint  and  very  little  of  a 
finely  molded  form  was  concealed  by  his  attire.  The  light  ren- 


Cooper  6$ 

dered  every  limb  and  joint  discernible,  and  Duncan  turned  away 
in  horror  when  he  saw  they  were  writhing  in  irrepressible  agony. 
The  woman  was  commencing  a  low  and  plaintive  howl  at  the 
sad  and  shameful  spectacle,  when  the  chief  put  forth  his  hand 
and  gently  pushed  her  aside. 

"  Reed-that-bends,"  he  said,  addressing  the  young  culprit  by 
name,  and  in  his  proper  language,  u  though  the  Great  Spirit  has 
made  you  pleasant  to  the  eyes,  it  would  have  been  better  that 
you  had  not  been  born.  Your  tongue  is  loud  in  the  village,  but 
in  battle  it  is  still.  None  of  my  young  men  strike  the  tomahawk 
deeper  into  the  war  post  —  none  of  them  so  lightly  on  the  Yen- 
geese.  The  enemy  know  the  shape  of  your  back,  but  they  have 
never  seen  the  color  of  your  eyes.  Three  times  have  they  called 
on  you  to  come,  and  as  often  did  you  forget  to  answer.  Your 
name  will  never  be  mentioned  again  in  your  tribe  —  it  is  already 
forgotten." 

As  the  chief  slowly  uttered  these  words,  pausing  impressively 
between  each  sentence,  the  culprit  raised  his  face,  in  deference 
to  the  other's  rank  and  years.  Shame,  horror,  and  pride  strug 
gled  in  his  lineaments.  His  eye,  which  was  contracted  with 
inward  anguish,  gleamed  on  the  presence  of  those  whose  breath 
was  his  feme;  and  the  latter  emotion  for  an  instant  predomi 
nated.  He  rose  to  his  feet  and,  baring  his  bosom,  looked 
steadily  on  the  keen,  glittering  knife  that  was  already  upheld  by 
his  inexorable  judge.  As  the  weapon  passed  slowly  into  his 
heart  he  even  smiled,  as  if  in  joy  at  having  found  death  less 
dreadful  than  he  had  anticipated,  and  fell  heavily  on  his  face,  at 
the  feet  of  the  rigid  and  unyielding  form  of  Uncas. 

The  squaw  gave  a  loud  and  plaintive  yell,  dashed  the  torch  to 
the  earth,  and  buried  everything  in  darkness.  The  whole  shud 
dering  group  of  spectators  glided  from  the  lodge,  like  troubled 
spirits ;  and  Duncan  thought  that  he  and  the  yet  throbbing  body 
of  the  victim  of  an  Indian  judgment  had  now  become  its  only 
tenants. 


CHAPTER  IV 

POE 

Two  or  three  Americans  only  have  won  secure  interna 
tional  recognition  in  letters.  One  of  them  is  certainly 
Edgar  Allan  Poe.  His  natural  equipment  or  endowment 
and  the  wonderful  perfection  of  his  art  have  carried  his  song 
over  seas,  and  made  him  widely  admired,  imitated,  and 
translated  as  hardly  another  of  the  native  writers.  This  is 
both  interesting  and  curious,  because  Poe  violates  one  of 
the  two  tests  set  up  at  the  beginning,  by  which  we  estimate 
American  literature :  namely,  he  is  not  representatively 
American  at  all.  So  far  from  his  work  standing  for  a 
definite  section  of  the  country,  as  does  Emerson's  for  New 
England,  or  Lanier's  for  the  South,  or  Bret  Harte's  for  the 
West,  Poe's  verse  or  prose  might  have  been  written  any 
where  within  or  without  our  borders.  It  has  no  local  color, 
and  it  does  not  reflect  our  native  ideas  or  ideals :  it  tells 
little  or  nothing  of  the  soil  whence  it  springs,  of  the  civiliza 
tion  behind  it. 

We  call  Poe  a  Southern  poet,  but  more  because  he  lived 
a  part  of  his  life  in  Virginia  than  because  he  in  any  way 
reflects  the  South.  In  fact,  Poe's  life  was  very  much  that  of 
a  nomad,  he  did  not  stay  long  eno/igh  in  any  one  place  to 
partake  of  it  in  any  deep  sense.  ^^The  permanency  of  his 
fame  and  the  rare  accomplishment  of  his  genius,  therefore, 

66 


Poe  67 

furnish  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  truth  of  art  in  its  per 
fection  ;  an  inimitable  gift  for  language  and  melody  and 
imaginative  conception  will  in  themselves,  even  if  separated 
from  certain  higher  qualities  which  we  like  to  associate  with 
the  world's  masterpieces,  reward  their  possessors  with  the 
choicest  literary  laurels.  And  this  becomes  all  the  more 
noteworthy  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  man  in  question 
died  when  but  a  trifle  over  forty  years  of  age/X 

Foe's  life  history  is  a  sad  and  somber  orfe^  and  as  strik 
ing,  perhaps,  as  any  in  the  annals  of  our  literature.  He  was 
born  in  Boston  in  1809,  his  parents  actor  folk,  the  mother 
English,  the  father  American.  But  as  he  was  adopted  by  a 
gentleman  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  Mr.  Allan,  when  he  was 
but  two  years  old,  his  earliest  years  were  spent  in  the  South. 
Five  years  of  school  life,  from  his  sixth  to  his  eleventh  year 
(a  period  of  vast  importance  in  the  upbringing  of  any  im 
pressionable  child  of  genius),  were  passed  in  an  English 
school  near  London;  possibly  some  of  Poe's  mystic  and 
strange  landscapes  were  influenced  by  these  surroundings, 
for  he  is  the  most  unlocal  of  writers.  From  his  eleventh  to 
his  sixteenth  year  he  fitted  for  college  in  Richmond ;  going 
thence  to  the  University  of  Virginia  in  February  of  1826, 
only  to  withdraw  under  a  cloud  in  December  of  the  same 
year.  There  seems  to  have  been  much  that  was  unfortunate 
in  the  early  home  life  of  Poe.  His  patron  petted  him,  but 
with  a  good  deal  of  temper  along  with  his  indulgence,  he 
fostered  traits  in  Poe's  willful  and  imperious  nature,  which, 
under  a  better  guidance,  might  have  been  checked,  and  per 
haps  eradicated.  At  the  time  he  was  ready  for  college  he 
was  ripe  to  show,  when  he  had  left  the  home,  the  results  of 
the  lack  of  wise  parental  restraint.  He  had  gambling  debts 
at  college,  and  various  rumors,  more  or  less  well  founded,  of 


68  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

extravagance  and  dissipation  have  sifted  down  to  us.  It  is 
only  fair  to  Poe  to  say  that  the  tendency  in  modern  scholar 
ship  is  to  exonerate  him  from  many  of  the  charges  of  his 
first  biographer,  Griswold,  and  thus  to  set  him  in  a  better 
light.  In  the  study  of  Poe's  life  by  Professor  George  E. 
Woodberry,  and  the  later  account  by  Professor  Harrison,  the 
tangled  record  is  straightened  out  in  many  ways,  and  justice 
attempted  at  least,  this  being  especially  true  in  the  case  of 
Professor  Harrison,  whose  kindly  estimate  is  the  result  of 
using  new  material,  and  may  be  sought  as  a  needed  correc 
tion  to  Griswold's  malice. 

It  should  be  added  that  whatever  Poe's  wildness  in  college 
and  after  life,  he  was  an  athlete  in  his  student  days,  a  fine 
swimmer  and  runner,  and  he  secured  honors  in  French  and 
Latin ;  in  other  words,  he  exhibited  himself  as  a  young  man 
of  parts  and  of  a  healthy  outdoor  activity,  —  something  not 
to  be  expected  of  the  dreamy  degenerate  which  Poe  has 
been  taken  for  by  some.  The  fact  is,  that  until  the  last  few 
years  there  was  a  picturesque  tradition  which  demanded 
that  Poe  be  regarded  as  a  somber  son  of  genius,  wrecked 
by  his  own  double  nature,  a  sort  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde. 
More  careful  examination,  inspired  by  the  modern  scientific 
spirit,  which  demands  truth  at  all  hazards  with  regard  to  the 
life  of  those  who  have  done  great  things,  has  placed  this 
writer  in  a  somewhat  different  light.  An  erratic  life  Poe 
indubitably  led ;  the  unfortunate  habit  of  overindulgence  of 
drink  he  did  possess.  But  all  this  has  been  treated  too  often 
in  a  melodramatic  way.  Poe  had  a  temperament  to  which 
one  glass  of  wine  was  intoxication ;  his  was  the  high-strung, 
nervous  physique,  which  ill  bears  any  unnatural  stimulant. 
And  at  least  it  may  be  said  that  he  paid  the  full  penalty  for 
his  misdoings,  —  there  are  few  men  indeed  who  do  not  pay 


Poe  69 

less  for  more  sinning.  There  is  plenty  of  testament  to  show 
that  Poe  in  maturity  for  long  periods  was  a  perfectly  well- 
trained,  quiet,  dignified  gentleman  of  elegant  carriage  and 
address.  Mr.  Parke  Godwin,  one  of  the  very  few  survivors  at 
the  present  writing  of  the  generation  which  had  direct  relations 
with  Poe,  has  testified  emphatically  to  the  happy  impression 
made  upon  him  by  Poe.  The  vagaries  of  his  life  touching 
women,  and  vagaries  they  were,  have  been  handled  in  the  same 
strictly  romantic  manner,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Delia  Cruscans. 
These  general  reflections  may  be  well  borne  in  mind  while 
we  consider  Poe  at  college.  Professor  Kent,  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  Virginia,  in  connection  with  the  recent  Poe 
memorial  meeting  at  which  the  Zolnay  bust  of  the  poet  was 
unveiled  at  that  institution,  published  a  sketch  in  which  the 
truth  about  Poe's  college  career  is  fairly  set  forth,  in  the 
light  of  the  records.  To  this  book  the  earnest  student  is 
commended.  It  is  sufficient  here  to  say,  that  on  the  whole, 
the  college  days  of  Edgar  A.  Poe  had  their  share  of  harum- 
scarum,  but  were  very  much  what  might  be  expected  of  a 
young  Virginia  lad  of  that  day  with  a  rich  guardian.  Plenty 
of  college  boys  there  were  then,  and  are  now,  who,  after 
similar  doings  in  their  salad  days,  make  reputable  and  valu 
able  citizens.  It  must  be  reiterated,  too,  that  while  Poe  was 
taken  out  of  college  before  his  first  year  was  completed, 
because  of  his  habits,  he  was  not  expelled;  his  guardian 
withdrew  him,  and  while  this  may  have  been  justified  by  the 
facts,  it  is  well  understood  now  that  Mr.  Allan  was  a  marti 
net  of  discipline,  erring  in  extreme  measures.  This  method 
of  handling  a  high-spirited,  proud,  sensitive  fellow,  with  a 
touch  of  morbidity  and  a  natural  wildness  in  his  blood,  de 
rived  perhaps  from  his  actor  forebears,  was  just  the  one  to 
produce  the  worst  results. 


jo  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

At  any  rate,  Poe,  resenting  the  treatment,  wandered  to 
Boston,  published  his  "  Tamerlane  "  there,  a  volume  pre 
cious  in  its  first  edition  to  all  book-lovers,  and  learned,  as 
every  young  poet  must,  that  literature  won't  bring  a  living. 
He  enlisted  in  the  army,  and  after  two  years  there  he  was 
admitted  to  West  Point,  being  assisted  by  Mr.  Allan,  who, 
by  this  time,  had  relented  in  his  attitude  toward  the  boy. 
He  remained  at  that  institution  less  than  a  year,  —  and  so, 
by  1831,  when  he  was  twenty- two,  we  find  him  in  Baltimore, 
trying  to  make  a  living  by  contributions  to  magazines. 
Looking  back  upon  the  five  years  between  1826-1831,  one 
feels  that  they  must  have  been  full  of  strange  experiences 
for  so  young  a  man ;  we  know  but  little  of  them,  for  Poe  in 
respect  to  the  details  of  his  external  life  was  most  reticent,  — 
this  in  spite  of  a  strange,  even  intense  egoism  as  to  his 
essential  life,  the  life  of  the  mind  and  soul.  A  feeling  of 
sadness  is  begotten,  a  sense  of  the  pathos  of  it  all,  as  one 
thinks  of  this  proud,  perturbed  young  man  roaming  from 
place  to  place,  from  occupation  to  occupation,  in  the  vain 
endeavor  to  find  work  and  an  abiding  city.  All  his  life  Poe 
was  a  wanderer,  and  a  fitting  epitaph  upon  his  tomb  one 
feels  would  be  that  in  "Hamlet"  :  "Rest,  perturbed  spirit." 

"Tamerlane,"  that  slim  volume  of  1827  (when  he  was 
eighteen),  contains  some  of  his  notable  work,  but  it  will  be 
best  to  pass  on  to  his  Baltimore  period,  and  think  of  the 
volume  of  1831,  called  simply  "  Poems,"  for  that  book  is 
substantially  Poe's  testament,  his  typical  contribution  to 
American  literature.  In  the  case  of  no  poet,  by  the  way, 
is  it  more  necessary  to  read  his  work  in  the  light  of  his 
personality  and  life.  One  thing  the  student  will  be  likely 
to  notice  perhaps  with  surprise :  the  smalmess  of  Poe's 
poetical  contributions.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  one  small 


Poe  71 

volume  of  only  about  fifty  poems  contains  his  whole  output 
in  verse  :  more  than  that,  the  pieces  upon  which  his  claim  to 
greatness  is  securely  founded  number  less  than  twenty,  — 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  examples  in  all  literary  history 
of  the  value  of  quality,  and  reminding  us  that  a  bad  epic  is 
worth  very  much  less  than  a  perfect  sonnet. 

The  youthful  poems  of  Poe  found  in  the  "  Tamerlane  " 
volume  show  a  clever  versifier,  influenced  plainly  by  the 
English  masters  ;  but  they  are  fairly  to  be  described  as  good 
rather  than  great,  the  improvisation  or  practice  work  of  a 
man  of  promise  ere  he  has  come  into  his  own  of  power. 
They  lack  the  peculiar  witchery  of  Poe,  and,  indeed,  upon 
the  evidence  they  offer,  the  Poe  who  was  to  be  can  hardly  be 
discovered.  There  is  some  significance  that  in  "  Tamer 
lane,"  the  title  poem  of  the  collection,  Poe  found  a  theme 
sympathetic  to  his  imperious  pride  and  spirit  of  revolt :  the 
Eastern  monarch  fn  his  haughty  spirit  of  superiority  (the 
reader  should,  in  this  connection,  read  Elizabethan  Marlowe's 
fine  double  play  of  " Tamerlane")  seemed  a  figure  to 
attract  young  Poe  from  the  very  nature  of  the  subject;  the 
poem,  therefore,  is  more  autobiographic  than  of  direct 
poetic  value.  The  next  poem  in  the  book,  —  another  East 
ern  motive,  —  "  Al  Aaraaf,"  is  also  of  interest  to  the  student, 
showing  Poe's  tendency  to  seize  on  a  theme  that  has  in  it 
an  ethereal  and  remote  poetical  significance  —  that  of  a 
great  star  which  appears  in  the  heavens,  dazzles  by  its  bril 
liancy,  and  then  disappears  forever.  A  certain  starry  aspira 
tion  thus  runs  through  all  the  poet's  work. 

But  it  was  with  the  "Poems"  of  1831  that  the  real  Poe 
was  announced :  herein,  in  such  pieces  as  "  To  Helen," 
"  The  Raven,"  "  Lenore,"  "  Israfel,"  "  The  City  in  the  Sea," 
and  "  The  Haunted  Palace,"  to  mention  only  a  half-dozen, 


72  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

all  of  them  now  of  household  fame,  the  distinctive  traits  of 
one  of  the  most  original  of  the  sons  of  song  were  made 
manifest.  It  will  be  well,  therefore,  at  this  point  to  say 
a  word  on  the  essential  greatness  of  Poe's  verse. 

Its  limitations  are  strictly  defined.  It  is  fairly  astonishing, 
indeed,  within  what  narrow  limits  this  writer's  power  cuts 
its  way  into  the  human  heart ;  it  is  like  a  Western  canon 
that  rises  sheer  in  odd  beauty  all  its  own,  yet  the  stream  that 
rushes  madly  through  its  deep  gorge  is  so  narrow  that  it 
would  seem  as  if  it  might  be  compassed  by  an  athlete's  leap. 
Yet  the  canon  is  one  of  the  great  effects  of  nature,  and  Poe's 
poetry  is  one  of  the  great  effects  of  modern  literature.  So 
far  as  it  may  be  analyzed,  it  consists  of  a  blend  of  three 
magics :  the  magic  of  word,  of  music,  and  of  a  strange  eery 
imagination.  It  lacks  the  higher  ethereal  quality  of  a  Words 
worth,  a  Tennyson,  or  a  Browning ;  it  wants  red  blood,  and  the 
appeal  to  the  more  apparent  interests  and  passions ;  it  is  not 
poetry  to  whose  measure  men  may  march  toward  the  City 
of  Perfection.  In  this  sense  it  is  hardly  great  poetry  :  Poe 
cannot  be  ranked  among  the  literary  masters  of  world-wide 
importance,  because  he  fails  both  on  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  sides  of  literature.  This  applies  not  only  to  his 
verse,  which  we  are  now  considering,  but  to  his  prose, 
\.  which  will  be  considered  afterward.  But  the  verse  of  Poe 
\  haunts,  charms,  bewitches,  hence  it  cannot  die.  His  sub- 
\  jects  are  really  but  variations  of  two  themes :  his  own  mis- 
\  fortunes  and  a  vague  lyric  love  for  woman,  personified  in 
\"Lenore,"  or  another:  woman  as  a  kind  of  symbol  for  a 
unystic,  shadowy  love  that  is  more  dream  than  flesh.  Poe 
is^thus  unearthly,  unfleshly,  —  all  is  moonlight  and  mist  and 
musical  vaporing  with  him,  but  what  wonders  of  sound  and 
suggestion  he  performs  with  these  ingredients  ! 


Poe  73 

As  a  type  of  his  somber  spirit  of  revolt,  the  sadness  over 
the  irrevocable  losses  of  life,  the  world-famous  "Raven" 
comes  first  to  mind;  a  poem  spouted  in  the  schoolroom, 
inevitable  to  all  English  Readers,  and  so  familiar  to  many 
who  have  not  read  poetry  in  general,  or  Poe  in  the  full 
range  of  his  work.  Modern  criticism  sometimes  likes  to 
point  to  this  poem  as  little  other  than  a  clever  trick,  and  the 
poet  himself  has  coldly  analyzed  it,  declaring  that  the  whole 
thing  was  mechanically  built  up  around  the  melodious  re 
frain  "  Never  More."  But,  legerdemain  or  no,  it  certainly 
is  in  its  way  a  masterpiece  of  music  and  suggestion,  a  match 
less  expression  of  a  certain  mood  of  world  weariness  and 
satiety.  It  won  a  prize  of  one  hundred  dollars  offered  by  a 
magazine  called  the  Mirror  in  1845,  when  he  was  thirty-six 
years  old,  and  by  this  success,  Poe,  just  beginning  his  career 
as  a  contributor  of  literary  material  to  the  periodicals,  was 
much  encouraged  to  go  on.  Since  "  The  Raven  "  is  the  best 
known  of  Poe's  poems,  and  although  effective  and  indeed 
wonderful  in  its  well-nigh  mesmeric  charm,  it  by  no  means 
stands  for  the  height  of  his  genius,  we  will  not  quote  it  here, 
but  will  illustrate  his  power  by  several  shorter  lyrics.  That 
entitled  "  To  Helen  "  is  a  perfect  example  of  him. 


TO  HELEN 

Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me 
Like  those  Nicasan  barks  of  yore, 

That  gently,  o'er  a  perfumed  sea, 
The  wean',  wayworn  wanderer  bore 
To  his  own  native  shore. 

On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam, 
Thy  hyacinth  hair,  thy  classic  face, 


74  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Thy  Naiad  airs,  have  brought  me  home 

To  the  glory  that  was  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome. 

Lo  !  in  yon  brilliant  window-niche 
How  statue-like  I  see  thee  stand, 
The  agate  light  within  thy  hand  ! 

Ah,  Psyche,  from  the  regions  which 
Are  Holy  Land  ! 

The  classic  atmosphere  is  perfectly  caught  here,  the 
simple  stanzaic  form  faultlessly  handled,  and  the  phrasing 
has  an  elegance  and  finish  beyond  praise.  The  touch  at 
the  end  is  typical,  with  its  hint  of  the  mystical,  lifting  the 
old-time  light  o'  love  by  implication  into  something  higher, 
akin  to  the  eternal  feminine.  Poe's  lines  are  often  in  their 
matchless  beauty  such  that  they  enter  into  the  common  body 
of  choice  quotations  from  the  poets ;  in  the  second  stanza, 
the  two  closing  lines  are  of  this  sort.  The  everlasting  motive 
of  fair  woman,  which  has  fed  poetry  more  than  any  other  one 
theme,  simply  because  it  is  the  central  expression  of  man's 
emotional  nature,  is  voiced  with  great  warmth  and  a  more 
personal  note  of  sorrow  as  well  as  with  a  greater  allurement 
of  metrical  device  in  "To  One  in  Paradise,"  a  lover's  sad 
plaint  of  his  lost  love.  The  magic  of  Poe's  metrical  handling 
is  especially  illustrated  in  the  closing  stanza,  which  is  by  far 
the  loveliest  of  the  four ;  one  never  gets  it  out  of  the  ear 
and  soul  when  once  it  enters. 

TO  ONE  IN  PARADISE 

Thou  wast  that  all  to  me,  love, 
For  which  my  soul  did  pine,  — - 

A  green  isle  in  the  sea,  love, 
A  fountain  and  a  shrine, 


Poe  75 

All  wreathed  with  fairy  fruits  and  flowers, 
And  all  the  flowers  were  mine. 

Ah,  dream  too  bright  to  last ! 

Ah,  starry  Hope  !  that  didst  arise 
But  to  be  overcast  ! 

A  voice  from  out  the  future  cries, 
«  On  !  on  ! "    But  o'er  the  Past 

(Dim  gulf !)  my  spirit  hovering  lies 
Mute,  motionless,  aghast ! 
For,  alas  !  alas  !  with  me 

The  light  of  Life  is  o'er  ! 

"  No  more  —  no  more  —  no  more  —  w 
(Such  language  holds  the  solemn  sea 

To  the  sands  upon  the  shore) 

Shall  bloom  the  thunder-blasted  tree, 

Or  the  stricken  eagle  soar  ! 

And  all  my  days  are  trances, 

And  all  my  nightly  dreams 
Are  where  thy  dark  eye  glances, 

And  where  thy  footstep  gleams,— 
In  what  ethereal  dances, 

By  what  eternal  streams. 

Mention  of  these  pieces  in  which  woman  is  hymned 
naturally  leads  to  some  reference  to  Poe's  relations  with  the 
sex,  a  puzzling  and  complex  aspect  of  his  stormy  life.  Here 
again,  common  sense,  and  a  desire  not  to  extend  facts  to  fit 
a  theory,  may  help  us.  After  four  years  of  literary  life  in 
Baltimore  ( 1 83  i-i  835  )  Poe  had  gone  to  Richmond  to  become 
editor  of  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger.  And  just  before 
going,  he  had  (it  is  believed  secretly)  married  his  cousin, 
Virginia  Clemm,  a  mere  child  of  thirteen  ;  at  all  events,  the 
ceremony  was  publicly  performed  the  next  year.  Poe's 


7 6  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

struggle  against  poverty  for  literary  recognition  —  and  dire 
enough  it  was  —  had  been  lightened  by  his  living  with  Mrs. 
Clemm,  his  aunt,  and  the  consequent  winning  of  her 
daughter.  At  this  time  he  was  dependent  upon  chance 
contributions  to  the  magazines,  and  when  he  won,  in  1833, 
by  a  story  entitled  "  The  Manuscript  Found  in  a  Bottle,"  a 
one  hundred  dollar  prize  offered  by  a  Baltimore  paper,  it 
came  like  a  benison  from  heaven.  It  must  be  understood 
that  he  steadily  wrote  fiction  along  with  verse,  although  we 
consider  the  former  after  finishing  with  the  poetry.  But 
such  windfalls  were  few  and  far  between,  and  he  barely  lived 
by  hack  work  during  this  period. 

Obviously  the  marriage  was  a  foolish  one,  judged  by  pru 
dential  considerations ;  but  it  is  long  since  either  bards  or 
tailors  have  been  altogether  sensible  in  giving  hostages  to 
fortune,  and  Poe's  followers  in  this  way  are  many.  His 
child  wife  was  beautiful,  and  that  Poe  loved  her  and  ideal 
ized  her,  that  she  furnished  much  of  the  inspiration  of  his 
best  song,  it  is  entirely  reasonable  to  believe.  That  he  was 
a  most  impressionable  man,  his  various  affairs  with  women 
after  his  wife's  death  go  to  show ;  in  fact,  with  his  ardent 
temperament,  his  tendency  to  emotional  excesses  of  all 
kinds,  his  imperious  temper  and  aristocratic  beauty,  one  can 
understand  that  he  must  have  been  a  fascinating  lover,  if  an 
uncertain  husband.  To  question  his  affection  for  his  young 
wife  is  to  take  the  extreme  of  cynicism  toward  Poe  in  his  ill- 
starred  fate.  The  gloomy  romanticism  of  his  career  receives 
part  of  its  attraction  from  this  relation  to  the  frail  girl  who 
for  twelve  years  shared  his  lot,  and  died  while  still  but  newly 
come  to  woman's  estate,  after  bitter,  yet  perhaps  bitter 
sweet,  years  of  companionship  with  an  erring  son  of  genius. 
That  the  loss  is  expressed  in  the  poem  last  quoted, 


Poe  77 

and  in  the  following  "Annabel  Lee,"  one  of  his  most 
familiar  and  well-loved  things  and  richly  deserving  its  repu 
tation,  who  can  doubt  ?  A  touch  of  pathos  is  added  by  the 
fact  that  this  poem  was  not  published  until  a  little  after  his 
own  death. 

ANNABEL  LEE 

It  was  many  and  many  a  year  ago, 

In  a  kingdom  by  the  sea, 
That  a  maiden  there  lived  whom  you  may  know, 

By  the  name  of  Annabel  Lee  ; 
And  this  maiden  she  lived  with  no  other  thought 

Than  to  love  and  be  loved  by  me. 

/was  a  child  and  she  was  a  child, 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea : 
But  we  loved  with  a  love  that  was  more  than  love,  — 

I  and  my  Annabel  Lee  ; 
With  a  love  that  the  winged  seraphs  of  heaven 

Coveted  her  and  me. 

And  this  was  the  reason  that,  long  ago, 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea, 
A  wind  blew  out  of  a  cloud,  chilling 

My  beautiful  Annabel  Lee  ; 
So  that  her  highborn  kinsman  came 

And  bore  her  away  from  me, 
To  shut  her  up  in  a  sepulcher 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea. 

The  angels,  not  half  so  happy  in  heaven, 

Went  envying  her  and  me,  — 
Yes !  —  that  was  the  reason  (as  all  men  know, 

In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea) 
That  the  wind  came  out  of  the  cloud  by  night, 

Chilling  and  killing  my  Annabel  Lee. 


7  8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

But  our  love  it  was  stronger  by  far  than  the  love 

Of  those  who  were  older  than  we,  — 

Of  many  far  wiser  than  we ; 
And  neither  the  angels  in  heaven  above, 

Nor  the  demons  down  under  the  sea, 
Can  ever  dissever  my  soul  from  the  soul 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee : 
For  the  moon  never  beams,  without  bringing  me  dreams 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee ; 

And  the  stars  never  rise,  but  I  feel  the  bright  eyes 

Of  the  beautiful  Annabel  Lee ; 
And  so,  all  the  night-tide,  I  lie  down  by  the  side 
Of  my  darling  —  my  darling  —  my  life  and  my  bride, 

In  the  sepulcher  there  by  the  sea, 

In  her  tomb  by  the  sounding  sea. 

In  another  poem,  seemingly  inspired  by  love,  "For 
Annie,"  a  remarkable,  though  unequal  performance,  certain 
lines  and  rhymes  of  which  are  as  well  known  as  anything 
Poe  did,  the  poet,  while'  brooding  on  loss  and  death,  gives 
the  reverse  of  the  picture.  Here,  not  the  mistress  but  her 
lover  is  dead,  and  is  imagined  as  happily  embowered,  even 
iin  his  grave,  by  the  luxuriant  tresses  of  his  sweetheart. 

FOR  ANNIE 

Thank  Heaven !  the  crisis  — 

The  danger  —  is  past, 
And  the  lingering  illness 

Is  over  at  last,  — 
And  the  fever  called  "Living" 

Is  conquered  at  last. 

Sadly,  I  know, 

I  am  shorn  of  my  strength 
And  no  muscle  I  move 

As  I  lie  at  full  length  ; 


Poe  79 


But  no  matter!  —  I  feel 
I  am  better  at  length. 

And  I  rest  so  composedly 

Now,  in  my  bed, 
That  any  beholder 

Might  fancy  me  dead,  — 
Might  start  at  beholding  me, 

Thinking  me  dead. 

The  moaning  and  groaning  — 
The  sighing  and  sobbing  — 

Are  quieted  now, 

With  that  horrible  throbbing 

At  heart :  —  ah,  that  horrible, 
Horrible  throbbing  ! 

The  sickness — the  nausea — 

The  pitiless  pain  — 
Have  ceased,  with  the  fever 

That  maddened  my  brain,  — 
With  the  fever  called  "  Living" 

That  burned  in  my  brain. 

And  oh !  of  all  tortures, 

That  torture  the  worst 
Has  abated  —  the  terrible 

Torture  of  thirst 
For  the  napthaline  river 

Of  Passion  accurst :  — 
I  have  drank  of  a  water 

That  quenches  all  thirst :  — 

Of  a  water  that  flows, 
With  a  lullaby  sound, 

From  a  spring  but  a  very  few 
Feet  underground,  — 

From  a  cavern  not  very  far 
Down  underground. 


8o  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

And  ah !  let  it  never 

Be  foolishly  said 
That  my  room  it  is  gloomy, 

And  narrow  my  bed ; 
For  man  never  slept 

In  a  different  bed,  — 
And,  to  sleep,  you  must  slumber 

In  just  such  a  bed. 

My  tantalized  spirit 
Here  blandly  reposes, 

Forgetting,  or  never 
Regretting  its  roses,  — 

Its  old  agitations 
Of  myrtles  and  roses. 

For  now,  while  so  quietly 

Lying,  it  fancies 
A  holier  odor 

About  it,  of  pansies,  — 
A  rosemary  odor 

Commingled  with  pansies,  — 
With  rue  and  the  beautiful 

Puritan  pansies. 

And  so  it  lies  happily, 

Bathing  in  many 
A  dream  of  the  truth 

And  the  beauty  of  Annie,  — « 
Drowned  in  a  bath 

Of  the  tresses  of  Annie. 

She  tenderly  kissed  me, 
She  fondly  caressed, 

And  then  I  fell  gently 
To  sleep  on  her  breast,  — 

Deeply  to  sleep 
From  the  heaven  of  her  breast. 


Poe  8 1 

When  the  light  was  extinguished 

She  covered  me  warm, 
And  she  prayed  to  the  angels 

To  keep  me  from  harm,  — 
To  the  queen  of  the  angels 

To  shield  me  from  harm. 

And  I  lie  so  composedly, 

Now,  in  my  bed, 
(Knowing  her  love) 

That  you  fancy  me  dead,  — 
And  I  rest  so  contentedly, 

Now  in  my  bed, 
(With  her  love  at  my  breast) 

That  you  fancy  me  dead, — 
That  you  shudder  to  look  at  me, 

Thinking  me  dead. 

But  my  heart  it  is  brighter 

Than  all  of  the  many 
Stars  in  the  sky, 

For  it  sparkles  with  Annie, 
It  glows  with  the  light 

*  Of  the  love  of  my  Annie, — 

With  the  thought  of  the  light 

Of  the  eyes  of  my  Annie. 

This  ghoulish  preference  for  charnel  house  themes  is 
characteristic  of  the  poet;  the  poem  is  curiously  com 
mingled  of  almost  unpoetical  realism  in  verse  and  the 
magic  that  is  his.  This  composition,  too,  is  an  excellent 
example"  of  his  mastery  of  the  refrain  or  repetend,  the 
repetition  of  verse  and  lines  with  slight  alteration  for  the 
effect  of  lingering  music :  a  device  developed  by  Poe  and 
hall-marked  by  his  genius  so  that  it  has  always  been  one 
of  his  technical  feats  and  graces.  His  handling  of  the 


82  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

refrain  in  "The  Raven,"  and  in  that  other  linguistic  mar 
vel,  "  The  Bells,"  is  familiar,  and  has  never  been  equaled  by 
any  poet  using  the  English  tongue. 

There  is  that  in  the  man's  genius  which  leads  him  at 
times  toward  a  sort  of  dim  symbolism,  fluent,  but  of  un 
clear  meaning,  a  sort  of  "revel  of  rhyme,"  with  sound 
substituted  for  sense.  This  is  well  illustrated  by  that  other 
baffling  poem  to  which  a  woman's  name  is  given,  "  Ulalume." 
If  one  utterly  ignorant  of  our  tongue  were  to  read  this  piece 
of  verse,  a  certain  pleasure  in  it  would  be  likely  to  follow ;  it 
is  so  wonderfully  smooth  flowing  and  swift  flowing.  The 
cryptic  meaning,  the  suggestion  of  gloom,  mystery,  and 
horror  running  through  it,  together  with  a  hint  of  the 
autobiographic,  all  merge  to  make  an  unforgetable  impres 
sion.  Like  Swinburne,  Poe  was  in  danger  of  this  extreme ; 
it  seems  as  if  his  one  peerless  gift  for  word  and  sound 
carried  him  off  his  feet  at  times.  But  let  the  piece  speak 
for  itself. 

ULALUME 

The  skies  they  were  ashen  and  sober ; 

The  leaves  they  were  crisped  and  sere — 

The  leaves  they  were  withering  and  sere ; 
It  was  night  in  the  lonesome  October 

Of  my  most  immemorial  year ; 
It  was  hard  by  the  dim  lake  of  Auber, 

In  the  misty  mid  region  of  Weir  — 
It  was  down  by  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 

In  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

Here  once,  through  an  alley  Titanic, 
Of  cypress,  I  roamed  with  my  Soul  — 
Of  cypress,  with  Psyche,  my  Soul. 


Poe  83 


These  were  days  when  my  heart  was  volcanic 

As  the  scoriae  rivers  that  roll  — 

As  the  lavas  that  restlessly  roll 
Their  sulphurous  currents  down  Yaanek 

In  the  ultimate  climes  of  the  pole  — 
That  groan  as  they  roll  down  Mount  Yaanek 

In  the  realms  of  the  boreal  pole. 

Our  talk  had  been  serious  and  sober, 

But  our  thoughts  they  were  palsied  and  sere- 
Our  memories  were  treacherous  and  sere  — 

For  we  knew  not  the  month  was  October, 
And  we  marked  not  the  night  of  the  year  — 
(Ah,  night  of  all  nights  in  the  year !) 

We  noted  not  the  dim  lake  of  Auber  — 

(Though  once  we  had  journeyed  down  here) 

Remembered  not  the  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 
Nor  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

And  now,  as  the  night  was  senescent, 
And  star  dials  pointed  to  morn  — 
As  the  star  dials  hinted  of  morn  — 

At  the  end  of  our  path  a  liquescent 
And  nebulous  luster  was  born, 

Out  of  which  a  miraculous  crescent 
Arose  with  a  duplicate  horn  — 

Astarte's  bediamonded  crescent 
Distinct  with  its  duplicate  horn. 

And  I  said  —  "  She  is  warmer  than  Dian: 
She  rolls  through  an  ether  of  sighs  — 
She  revels  in  a  region  of  sighs  : 

She  has  seen  that  the  tears  are  not  dry  on 
These  cheeks,  where  the  worm  never  dies, 

And  has  come  past  the  stars  of  the  Lion, 
To  point  us  the  path  to  the  skies  — 
To  the  Lethean  peace  of  the  skies  — 


84  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Come  up,  in  despite  of  the  Lion, 
To  shine  on  us  with  her  bright  eyes  — 

Come  up  through  the  lair  of  the  Lion, 
With  love  in  her  luminous  eyes." 

But  Psyche,  uplifting  her  finger, 

Said  —  "  Sadly  this  star  I  mistrust  — 
Her  pallor  I  strangely  mistrust :  — 

Oh,  hasten!  —  oh,  let  us  not  linger! 
Oh,  fly !  —  let  us  fly !  —  for  we  must." 

In  terror  she  spoke,  letting  sink  her 
Wings  until  they  trailed  in  the  dust  — 

In  agony  sobbed,  letting  sink  her 
Plumes  till  they  trailed  in  the  dust  — 
Till  they  sorrowfully  trailed  in  the  dust. 

I  replied  —  "  This  is  nothing  but  dreaming : 

Let  us  on  by  this  tremulous  light ! 

Let  us  bathe  in  this  crystalline  light ! 
Its  Sibyllic  splendor  is  beaming 

With  Hope  and  in  Beauty  to-night :  — 

See!  —  it  flickers  up  the  sky  through  the  night! 
Ah,  we  safely  may  trust  to  its  gleaming, 

And  be  sure  it  will  lead  us  aright, 
We  safely  may  trust  to  a  gleaming 

That  cannot  but  guide  us  aright, 

Since  it  flickers  up  to  Heaven  through  the  night." 

Thus  I  pacified  Psyche  and  kissed  her, 
And  tempted  her  out  of  her  gloom  — 
And  conquered  her  scruples  and  gloom ; 

And  we  passed  to  the  end  of  the  vista, 
But  were  stopped  by  the  door  of  a  tomb  — 
By  the  door  of  a  legended  tomb ; 

And  I  said  —  "  What  is  written,  sweet  sister, 
On  the  door  of  this  legended  tomb  ?  " 
She  replied  —  "  Ulalume  —  Ulalume  — 
'Tis  the  vault  of  thy  lost  Ulalume!1' 


Poe  85 

Then  my  heart  it  grew  ashen  and  sober 
As  the  leaves  that  were  crisped  and  sere  — 
As  the  leaves  that  w.ere  withering  and  sere  — 

And  I  cried  —  "It  was  surely  October 
On  this  very  night  of  last  year 
That  I  journeyed  —  I  journeyed  down  here  — 
That  I  brought  a  dread  burden  down  here  — 
On  this  night  of  all  nights  in  the  year, 
Ah,  what  demon  has  tempted  me  here? 

Well  I  know,  now,  this  dim  lake  of  Auber — 
This  misty  mid  region  of  Weir  — 

Well  I  know,  now,  this  dank  tarn  of  Auber, 
This  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir." 

There  is  a  little  group  of  poems,  broader  both  in  sugges 
tion  and  movement,  which  exhibit  Poe  in  a  most  striking 
manifestation  of  his  unique  power.  They  are  prevailingly 
somber,  vague,  unhuman  productions,  so  to  say,  but  com 
pelling  in  their  lure  and  loveliness.  Such  a  one  is  "The 
City  in  the  Sea."  The  metrical  movement  is  admirable,  and 
few  greater  poems  of  mood  and  picture  can  be  named  in 
all  literature.  If  the  Philistines  should  turn  upon  us  with  a 
very  natural  question,  "  But  what  does  it  all  mean?"  we  per 
haps  hesitate ;  it  is  best  taken  as  a  dream  vision.  It  is  full 
of  color  and  music  and  that  penumbra  of  suggestion  that  is 
in  all  good  poetry,  and  in  the  use  of  which  Poe  is  richly 
endowed.  It  is  unnecessary  to  look  for  self-consciousness 
or  definite  allegory;  it  is  rather  poetry  for  poetry's  sake, 
and  should  be  enjoyed  as  such. 

THE  CITY  IN  THE  SEA 

Lo!  Death  has  reared  himself  a  throne 
In  a  strange  city  lying  alone 
Far  down  within  the  dim  West, 


86  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Where  the  good  and  the  bad  and  the  worst  and  the  best 

Have  gone  to  their  eternal  rest. 

There  shrines  and  palaces  and  towers 

(Time-eaten  towers  that  tremble  not!) 

Resemble  nothing  that  is  ours. 

Around,  by  lifting  winds  forgot, 

Resignedly  beneath  the  sky 

The  melancholy  waters  lie. 


Butlo!  a  stir  is  in  the  air! 
The  wave  —  there  is  a  movement  there! 
As  if  the  towers  had  thrust  aside, 
In  slightly  sinking,  the  dull  tide,  — 
As  if  their  tops  had  feebly  given 
A  void  within  the  filmy  Heaven. 
The  waves  have  now  a  redder  glow, 
The  hours  are  breathing  faint  and  low  ; 
And  when,  amid  no  earthly  moans, 
Down,  down  that  town  shall  settle  hence, 
Hell,  rising  from  a  thousand  thrones, 
Shall  do  it  reverence. 

Another  such  poem  is  "  The  Haunted  Palace,"  which  is 
clothed  upon  with  all  the  master's  magic  of  word  music  and 
word  picture. 

THE  HAUNTED  PALACE 

In  the  greenest  of  our  valleys 

By  good  angels  tenanted, 
Once  a  fair  and  stately  palace  — 

Radiant  palace  —  reared  its  head 
In  the  monarch  Thought's  dominion— 

It  stood  there  ! 
Never  seraph  spread  a  pinion 

Over  fabric  half  so  fair! 


Poe  87 

Banners  yellow,  glorious,  golden, 

On  its  roof  did  float  and  flow, 
(This  -—  all  this  —  was  in  the  olden 

Time  long  ago,) 
And  every  gentle  air  that  dallied, 

In  that  sweet  day, 
Along  the  ramparts  plumed  and  pallid, 

A  winged  odor  went  away. 

Wanderers  in  that  happy  valley, 

Through  two  luminous  windows,  saw 
Spirits  moving  musically, 

To  a  lute's  well-tuned  law, 
Round  about  a  throne  where,  sitting 

(Porphyrogene  !) 
In  state  his  glory  well  befitting, 

The  ruler  of  the  realm  was  seen. 

And  all  with  pearl  and  ruby  glowing 

Was  the  fair  palace  door, 
Through  which  came  flowing,  flowing,  flowing, 

And  sparkling  ever  more, 
A  troop  of  Echoes,  whose  sweet  duty 

Was  but  to  sing, 
In  voices  of  surpassing  beauty, 

The  wit  and  wisdom  of  their  king. 

But  evil  things,  in  robes  of  sorrow, 

Assailed  the  monarch's  high  estate. 
(Ah,  let  us  mourn!  —  for  never  morrow 

Shall  dawn  upon  him  desolate !) 
And  round  about  his  home  the  glory 

That  blushed  and  bloomed, 
Is  but  a  dim-remembered  story 

Of  the  old  time  entombed. 
And  travelers,  now,  within  that  valley, 

Through  the  red-litten  windows  sec 
Vast  forms,  that  move  fantastically 

To  a  discordant  melody, 


88  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

While,  like  a  ghastly  rapid  river, 

Through  the  pale  door 
A  hideous  throng  rush  out  forever 

And  laugh,  —  but  smile  no  more. 

Here  the  allegory  is  too  steadily  apparent :  the  writer 
seems  to  refer  to  his  own  life,  gifted  with  intellect  and  soul 
and  fallen,  through  whatever  cause,  on  evil  days  of  revolt, 
despair,  and  doom.  It  is  most  impressive,  and  attracts  with 
a  sort  of  shuddering  fascination. 

We  cannot  do  better  than  to  leave  Poe's  poetry  with  the 
starry  lyric  "  Israfel "  ;  one  of  the  highest  flights  of  his  genius, 
and  like  the  one  just  given,  thinly  veiling  autobiographic 
confession.  To  Poe,  poetry,  as  he  himself  said,  was  a  passion 
rather  than  a  principle;  the  conception  of  the  heavenly 
bard  whose  impassioned  themes  suggested  the  place  and 
opportunity;  the  thought  of  this  Israfel  mentioned  in  the 
Koran  as  having  heartstrings  for  a  lute,  appealed  with  the 
sure  appeal  of  a  kindred  soul.  In  singing  of  him  he  sang 
of  himself. 

ISRAFEL1 

In  Heaven  a  spirit  doth  dwell, 
"  Whose  heartstrings  are  a  lute." 

None  sing  so  wildly  well 

As  the  angel,  Israfel, 

And  the  giddy  stars  (so  legends  tell) 

Ceasing  their  hymns,  attend  the  spell 
Of  his  voice,  all  mute. 

Tottering  above, 

In  her  highest  noon, 

The  enamored  moon 
Blushes  with  love, — 

1  And  the  angel  Israfel,  whose  heartstrings  are  a  lute,  and  who  has  the 
sweetest  voice  of  all  God's  creatures.  —  KORAN. 


Poe  89 


While,  to  listen,  the  red  levin 
(With  the  rapid  Pleiades,  even, 
Which  were  seven,) 
Pauses  in  Heaven. 

And  they  say  (the  starry  choir 
And  the  other  listening  things) 

That  Israfeirs  fire 

Is  owing  to  that  lyre 
By  which  he  sits  and  sings,  — 

The  trembling  living  wire 
Of  those  unusual  strings. 

But  the  skies  that  angel  trod, 
Where  deep  thoughts  are  a  duty  — 

Where  Love's  a  grown-up  God,  — 

Where  the  Houri  glances  are 
Imbued  with  all  the  beauty 

Which  we  worship  in  a  star. 

Therefore,  thou  art  not  wrong, 

Israfeli,  who  despisest 
An  unimpassioned  song : 
To  thee  the  laurels  belong, 

Best  bard,  because  the  wisest! 
Merrily  live,  and  long ! 

The  ecstasies  above 
With  thy  burning  measures  suit 

Thy  grief,  thy  joy,  thy  hate,  thy  love, 
With  the  fervor  of  thy  lute : 
Well  may  the  stars  be  mute! 

Yes,  Heaven  is  thine  ;  but  this 
Is  a  world  of  sweets  and  sours : 
Our  flowers  are  merely  —  flowers, 

And  the  shadow  of  thy  perfect  bliss 
Is  the  sunshine  of  ours. 


90  Literary  Leaders  of*  America 

If  I  could  dwell 
Where  Israfel 

Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody,  — 
While  a  bolder  note  than  this  might  swell 

From  my  lyre  within  the  sky. 

Such  is  a  characteristic  picture  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  A 
sympathetic  knowledge  of  these  quoted  pieces,  a  re-reading 
of  the  choicest  here  mentioned,  will  let  the  reader,  as  nothing 
else  will,  into  the  heart  of  the  mystery,  the  abiding- place  of 
the  charm.  A  thorough  familiarity  with  the  eight  or  ten 
pieces  quoted  will  effect  this  better  than  a  dutiful  perusal  of 
the  rest  of  his  work.  Eventually,  and  for  that  very  reason, 
the  lovers  of  Poe,  having  felt  the  delight  of  these  master 
pieces,  will  read  his  verse  in  its  entirety  as  a  labor  of  love. 

Now  there  are  only  a  very  few  poets  in  the  whole  range 
of  English-speaking  literature  possessing  the  metrical  mas 
tery,  the  felicity  of  verse,  the  subtle  something  besides, 
which  gives  verse  distinction  and  grace,  denoting  that  of 
Poe.  For  this  reason,  and  in  spite  of  his  not  always  admira- 

\ble  tendency  to  bemoan  his  fate  in  terms  of  art  and  aspire 
to  the  starry  way  through  human  griefs  and  graves,  does  he 
occupy  his  strangely  definite  position  in  American  literature 
as  a  poet,  one  of  the  few  genuine  creators.  But  the  most 
astonishing  part  of  it  is,  let  us  repeat,  that  he  accomplished 
this  without  bringing  a  high  and  helpful  message  to  man 
kind,  and  as  a  poet  of  but  one  theme,  and  that  a  narrow  and 
largely  morbid  one.  The  fact  emphasizes  the  might  of  art, 
the  dominance  of  one  supreme  gift,  the  gift  of  song.  The 
lovers  of  American  poetry  can  always  point  with  pride  to 
Poe  as  a  master  who  had  conquered  by  patient  labor  along 


Poe  91 

with  natural  endowment,  the  graces  of  the  poetic  art,  until 
his  technique  became  so  perfect  that  time  could  not  destroy 
his  work. 

But  it  must  not  be  overlooked  that  Poe  did  work  in  fiction 
hardly  less  remarkable  than  that  which  he  accomplished  in 
verse.  We  have  already  noted  how,  in  the  Baltimore 
days  of  obscurity,  he  wrote  prose  fiction  in  short  story  form. 
These  stories  he  continued  to  produce  throughout  his  career 
of  magazine  writer,  editor,  and  general  literary  hack  worker. 
As  poetry  waned  in  him,  prose  grew,  and  to  it,  after  he  was 
thirty  years  of  age,  he  gave  most  of  his  time  and  strength, 
prose  critical  and  artistic.  This  turning  from  verse  to  prose, 
from  the  life  of  the  emotions  to  that  which  embodied 
some  of  the  reasoning  processes,  is,  of  course,  the  common 
experience  of  literary  persons. 

All  this  fiction,  in  its  final  shape,  appears  in  two  volumes. 
It  was  originally  published  as  "  Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and 
Arabesque"  in  1840  and  as  "Tales"  in  1845.  In  the 
division  of  fiction,  one  has  to  include  all  short  stories,  con 
cerning  which  we  have  already  said  something.  In  this  Poe 
was  well-nigh  as  supreme  as  he  is  in  the  minor  key  of  lyric 
verse.  He  is  a  master  in  the  command  of  atmosphere, 
color,  sound,  and  suggestion  woven  into  and  about  a  motive 
of  mystery,  horror,  and  subtle  spiritual  and  supernatural 
significance.  His  work  of  this  kind  ranges  from  the  detec 
tive  story,  —  of  which  the  "  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue  " 
is  a  type,  —  a  little  classic  which  furnished  Conan  Doyle  at 
a  later  date  the  stimulus  for  his  "  Sherlock  Holmes,"  through 
gradations  many  of  horror  and  adventure  stories  to  such 
fine  fantasies  as  the  "Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher"  or 
"Ligeia,"  where  all  is  innuendo  and  nuance,  weird  picture 
and  mournful  yet  passionate  wail  of  music.  For  illustra- 


92  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

tions  of  these  various  sorts,  one  may  read  "  The  Gold  Bug," 
"The  Black  Cat,"  "The  Telltale  Heart,"  and  "William 
Wilson."  There  'is  nothing  like  this  fiction  in  English 
literature.  Some  of  the  tales  show  a  curious  compound 
of  grave  scientific  deduction,  of  lofty  flights,  of  a  somber 
imagination.  This  led  one  of  his  editors,  Mr.  Woodberry, 
to  name  a  whole  division  of  his  work  "  Tales  of  Ratioci 
nation"  and  still  another  "Tales  of  Pseudo  Science."  In 
this  gravely  realistic  handling  of  imaginative  material,  Poe 
introduces  a  method  in  fiction  which  has  become  common 
enough  with  us  now,  and  which  makes  his  work,  although  it  is 
a  half-century  or  more  old,  seem  strangely  modern.  Perhaps 
no  one  has  so  wonderfully  well  blended  realism  and  romance 
in  this  way.  The  author  possessed  a  smattering  of  knowl 
edge,  scientific,  physical,  ajid  ethical,  which  he  displays  with 
the  greatest  skill  and  plausibility,  and,  indeed,  Poe's  mind 
was  curiously  analytic,  and  potentially  at  least,  his  powers  of 
reasoning  were  great.  This  he  brings  to  bear  in  his  fiction 
in  a  way  that  is  most  effective.  He  is  a  pioneer  in  using  for 
literary  purposes  the  then  new  marvels  of  scientific  dis 
covery,  —  physics,  thought  transference,  electricity,  and  the 
like.  The  verisimilitude  of  fact  is  perfectly  conveyed  at  the 
same  time  that  the  wildest  imaginations  are  being  indulged 
in  with  a  somberness  that  almost  cheats  us  into  believing. 

The  form  of  his  work  demands  a  word.  He  wrote  the 
tale,  not  essaying  larger  fiction,  save  in  the  case  of  "  Arthur 
Gordon  Pym,"  which,  however  fine  in  conception  and  be 
yond  criticism  in  execution,  is,  on  the  whole,  less  success 
ful.  The  short  story,  from  a  dozen  to  fifty  pages  in  length, 
was  the  mold  into  which  his  genius  naturally  ran  for  self- 
expression,  and  he  is  a  veritable  pioneer,  and  in  some  wise 
the  creator  of  the  modern  short  story.  It  would  not  be  true 


Poe  93 

to  say  that  Poe  founded  the  short  story,  for  Washington  Irving, 
as  we  have  seen,  and  Dickens,  wrote  them  before  him ;  but 
Poe  set  his  seal  upon  certain  categories  of  the  tale,  and  he 
has  never  been  surpassed,  indeed,  has  never  been  equaled, 
within  his  particular  preserves.  His  position  therefore  in  the 
history  of  the  general  evolution  of  the  fiction  of  our  tongue 
is  an  important  one. 

To  read  his  stories  is  to  have  an  increased  sense  of  the 
gloom  as  well  as  the  grandeur  of  this  man's  gift.  There  is 
something  aloof,  unhuman,  uncanny  in  it  all.  It  stimulates 
the  brain  and  makes  the  heart  beat  faster  with  wonder  and 
fear  and  awe ;  but  it  does  not  expand  the  nature,  or  warm 
the  cockles  of  the  heart  with  that  cheery  sense  of  man's 
brotherhood.  For  all  these  things  in  literature,  we  must  go 
elsewhere.  Poe's  genius  in  prose,  even  more  than  in  poetry, 
is  of  the  moonlight  and  of  the  midnight,  but  very  rare  and 
perfect,  for  the  light  of  the  moon  has  an  ethereal  significance, 
and  the  night  is  the  imagination's  chosen  stalking  ground. 

We  must  now  trace  the  remaining  years  of  Poe's  too  brief, 
tragically  incomplete,  erring  life.  The  story  expressed  in  a 
sentence,  is  the  record  of  changing  employment  and  resi 
dence  ;  he  did  well  for  a  while,  and  then,  through  weakness, 
and  because  of  unfortunate  traits  of  character  which  made 
it  difficult  for  others  to  get  on  with  him,  trouble  and  failure 
would  come,  and  the  family  would  begin  again  elsewhere. 
Already  in  Baltimore,  the  drink  habit  and  the  drug  habit 
had  lifted  their  skeleton  heads ;  then,  as  throughout  his  days, 
be  it  remembered,  perhaps  less  to  be  called  habits  than 
irregularities,  whose  results  would,  in  his  case,  be  ten  times 
more  disastrous  than  happens  with  the  steady  alcoholic 
indulgence  of  the  average  club  man  about  town. 

Poe's  editorial  experience  was  varied,  and  he  had  brilliant 


94  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

qualifications  for  such  a  function.  Again  and  again  he  took 
hold  of  a  new  or  defunct  publication  and  brought  it  into  good 
estate.  But  alas  !  he  lacked  perseverance,  he  lacked  equa 
nimity,  that  nomadic  restlessness  that  seemed  to  be  in  his  very 
being  drew  him  on.  He  was  moody,  irritable,  suspicious ;  per 
haps  his  statements  were  sometimes  untrustworthy,  though 
God  alone  can  pronounce  upon  the  physical  condition  which 
made  them  possible.  Misunderstandings  and  quarrels  with 
friends  were  not  uncommon.  One  is  saddened  and  perplexed 
in  trying  to  get  a  clear  notion  of  such  a  gifted,  complex,  contra 
dictory  human  creature  as  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  No  easy-going 
theory  which  complacently  divides  human  beings  into  two 
parts,  the  sheep  and  the  goats,  will  help  in  this  case.  Human 
nature  is  an  intricate  thing,  and  Poe  was  one  of  those  men 
whose  bosom  was  a  microcosm  of  all  the  light  and  shadow  of 
the  universe.  Two  beings  dwelt  in  his  handsome  body. 
For  his  good  side  he  had  many  winning  and  lovable  quali 
ties,  —  quiet,  dignified,  with  a  manner  of  remarkable  gentle 
ness,  with  his  pale,  fine  face  and  the  wide  brow  over  which 
waved  the  dark  hair,  with  splendid  eyes,  and  possessed  of  a 
voice  of  charming  timbre,  his  social  graces  were  very  un 
usual,  and  those  who  encountered  him  when  these  attrac 
tions  were  allowed  their  natural  display,  were  greatly 
drawn  to  him,  and  have  left  tributes  which  seem  quite  at 
variance  with  the  darker  testimonies,  which,  however,  are 
readily  understood  when  one  understands  his  complexity. 
There  was  a  touch  of  Southern  chivalry  in  his  address  to 
women,  and  the  fact  that  he  was  a  poet  lent  its  glamour. 

One  can  well  believe  that  there  were  many  days  in  that 
little  Fordham  cottage  near  New  York  City  (which  can  be 
now  visited  by  the  public,  it  having  been  made  a  memorial 
to  the  poet)  when  the  young  wife,  Virginia,  felt  the  charm  of 


Poe  95 

his  presence,  the  privilege  of  his  comradeship.  That  there  is 
a  reverse  to  the  medal,  is  one  of  the  tragedies  of  literary 
history  and  human  experience. 

When  Poe  went  to  Richmond  as  the  editor  of  the  South 
ern  Literary  Messenger,  his  prospects  were  good.  His  pay 
was  increased  soon  after  he  began,  but  he  was  steady  in  his 
work  only  a  short  time,  and  the  irregularity  of  his  charac 
ter  estranged  his  friend  the  editor  and  led  to  his  dismissal. 
All  his  subsequent  experiences  were  of  this  character  ;  new 
positions,  bright  prospects,  dashed  hopes,  melancholy  end 
ings.  One's  thoughts  turn  again  and  again  with  a  genuine 
heartache  to  the  lovely  little  girl  wife  who  watched  this 
erratic  orbit,  and  was  aware  of  the  light  that  burned  within. 
After  Richmond,  he  went  to  New  York,  taking  up  literary 
work  there  in  1837-1838.  Then  he  moved  to  Philadelphia, 
where  he  made  his  headquarters  for  six  years ;  living  in  the 
suburbs  in  a  little  cottage  about  which  roses  climbed.  Dur 
ing  these  years  in  Philadelphia  he  held  editorial  positions 
with  Burton's  Magazine  and  Graham's  Magazine,  in  the 
case  of  the  last  named  taking  full  charge  and  bringing  it  into 
prominence  as  a  literary  periodical  through  his  wise  direct 
orship  ;  but  here,  as  always,  was  the  fatal  lapse. 

The  final  five  years  of  Poe's  life  of  bufferings  and  brief 
calms  were  spent  in  New  York,  where  he  had  connections 
with  the  Evening  Journal  and  the  Broadway  Journal,  of 
the  second  of  which  he  became  owner  and  editor,  and  it 
was  at  this  period  that  he  occupied  the  Fordham  cottage  a 
few  miles  from  the  city ;  an  utterly  simple,  one-storied  lit 
tle  structure,  where,  in  1847,  Virginia  died  °^  consumption. 
It  is  a  terrible  picture,  that  of  the  death  of  the  child  wife 
when  the  Poes  were  so  poor  that  the  poet  drew  his  own 
coat  over  the  emaciated  body  hi  order  to  keep  off  the  cold, 


96  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

against  which  he  was  unable  to  provide  the  necessary  cov 
erings.  The  haunting,  melodious  sadness  of  "  Annabel  Lee  " 
may  well  be  autobiographic  in  voicing  the  sorrow  which 
rolled  in  upon  his  soul  at  this  time.  An  attack  of  brain 
fever  followed  upon  Virginia's  death,  and  his  friends  had  to 
make  up  a  purse  to  take  him  through  this  strait.  On  his 
recovery,  he  resumed  his  literary  work,  but  was  perceptibly 
aged  and  spent;  his  black  moods  carrying  him  at  times 
close  to  the  verge  of  insanity.  Terribly  lonesome  as  he  was, 
we  find  him  less  than  a  year  later  offering  himself  to  a  dear 
friend  and  fellow  verse  writer,  Mrs.  Sarah  Whitman  of  Provi 
dence,  who,  after  much  dubiety,  gave  him  a  half  promise 
based  upon  his  good  conduct,  only  a  month  later  to  with 
draw  her  pledge  because  of  a  spree  in  which  he  indulged. 
Poe  at  this  time  was  no  doubt  under  great  stress,  and 
moody  to  the  extreme.  He  was  lonely,  depressed,  at  times 
desperate.  That  he  turned  for  companionship  to  congenial 
women  is  not  surprising.  In  July,  1849,  he  went  to  Rich 
mond  with  the  idea  of  starting  a  magazine  in  that  city.  Poe 
had  believed  for  years  in  the  possibility  of  using  a  literary 
organ  in  the  South  that  would  bring  that  section  of  the 
country  into  literary  connection  with  the  North.  He  visited 
friends  during  the  summer  in  the  South,  and  in  spite  of  sev 
eral  moral  backslidings  in  the  way  of  drink,  entered  into 
relations  with  Mrs.  Sarah  Skelton,  a  well-to-do  widow,  and  an 
early  flame  of  his  youth,  which  promised  to  lead  to  marriage. 
When  Poe  left  Richmond  in  the  fall  of  this  year  (1849),  ms 
prospects  —  in  spite  of  his  health  and  intemperate  habits  — 
were  comparatively  encouraging,  but  he  was  doomed  to  be 
his  own  worst  enemy.  He  never  got  farther  in  his  north 
ward  journey  than  Baltimore,  where  he  was  found  helpless 
and  insensible  in  a  saloon,  was  taken  into  a  city  hospital, 


Poe  97 

and  after  four  days  of  wretchedness,  died,  being  but 
little  past  his  fortieth  year,  in  what  should  have  been 
the  very  prime  of  his  powers,  the  best  of  his  literary 
performance. 

His  tomb  is  visited  to-day  by  thousands  in  a  little  grave 
yard  connected  with  an  old  church  in  that  city.  The  record 
of  such  a  brief,  tragic  life  is  almost  too  piteous  to  bear.  Lit 
erary  annals  hardly  hold  a  case  in  which  the  dramatic  con 
trast  of  genius  and  weakness,  of  high  and  low,  in  human 
achievements,  clash  with  more  violent  discord. 

A  final  word  should  be  spoken  of  Poe  as  a  critic  of  liter 
ature,  for  he  left  several  volumes  of  criticism.  Much  of  it 
is  journalistic,  because  of  its  reference  to  current  writers  now 
forgotten,  and  it  is  therefore  not  of  permanent  value.  But 
Poe  had  remarkable  analytic  gifts,  as  well  as  gifts  of  remark 
able  expression.  He  was  not  less  analytic  than  imaginatively 
sympathetic,  one  is  tempted  to  say,  in  his  creative  work  both 
in  fiction  and  poetry.  There  seems  a  double  nature  in  the 
man,  intellectually  as  well  as  morally.  Hence  certain  of  his 
papers  entitled  "The  Rationale  of  Verse"  and  "The  Poetic 
Principle,"  are  most  interesting  and  suggestive,  —  especially 
in  that  they  are  the  productions  of  a  great  poet  speaking  of 
the  art  he  represents.  His  theories  are  still  much  discussed. 
Certain  of  his  statements,  like  the  famous  dictum  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  a  long  poem,  because  the  poetic  ecstasy 
is  in  its  very  constitution  of  short  duration,  and  hence, 
ideally  at  least,  should  be  completed  at  one  sitting,  in  one 
mood,  has  provoked  a  great  deal  of  argument.  Poe  had  a 
high  ideal  of  his  craft,  and  a  profound  respect  for  its  tech- 
nic.  His  teaching,  which  separated  the  beauty  which  he 
claimed  to  be  the  abiding  aim  of  all  poetry  from  any  and 
all  didactic  purposes,  which  so  often  were  associated  with 
H 


98  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

it,  was  more  needed  and  wholesome  in  his  own  day  than 
our  own,  because  then  the  elder  writers  were  prone  to 
preach,  whereas  at  present,  estheticism  and  art  for  art's 
sake  make  up  the  most  popular  creed,  and  there  is  very 
little  danger  of  careless  technic.  Yet  Poe  indubitably 
enunciated  a  sound  and  lasting  principle  of  art  in  declaring 
the  arousement  and  exercise  of  the  feeling  for  beauty  to  be 
the  end  of  art,  —  the  idea  so  nobly  expressed  by  Keats,  in  his 

Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty,  this  is  all 
Ye  know  and  all  ye  need  to  know. 

Like  the  great  English  critic,  Hazlitt,  Poe's  literary  attain 
ments  were  curiously  commingled  of  acuteness  and  broad- 
minded  appreciation,  together  with  spite,  envy,  and  an  absurd 
overestimate  of  the  second  rate.  He  was  unfair  to  Long 
fellow  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  he  lauded  contemporary 
poetasters  whose  names  have  long  since  been  consigned  to 
oblivion.  It  was  only  when  he  got  away  from  personalities 
that  he  was  sure  to  be  at  his  finest. 

The  student,  then,  who  is  desirous  of  getting  a  rounded 
view  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  must  study  him  first  of  all  as  a 
poet,  next  as  a  remarkable  writer  of  short  stories,  and  then, 
finally,  as  supplementary,  read  his  best  criticism,  mainly  for 
the  light  it  throws  upon  his  own  creations  in  song  and  story. 


CHAPTER  V 

HAWTHORNE 

IN  thinking  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  as  a  man  and 
author,  Wordsworth's  line  on  Milton  leaps  to  the  mind  :  — 

His  soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart. 

There  is  something  aloof,  a  touch  of  th«  strange,  and  shy, 
and  mysterious  about  the  solitary  genius  of  the  man  of 
Salem.  All  latter-day  attempts  to  exhibit  him  in  his  per 
sonality  and  daily  walk  as  a  creature  of  warmly  human 
relations  do  not  remove  the  impression  gained  from  his 
works  and  consonant  with  his  acts  and  thoughts  and  feelings 
as  they  are  revealed  in  his  biography.  Yet  his  gifts  were 
masculine  ;  he  lacked  the  erraticism  and  morbidity  of  a  Poe. 
But  there  was  a  hint  of  the  night  in  it,  the  night  lit  by  the 
pale,  mystic  radiance  of  heaven's  high-placed  stars.  The 
study  of  his  life  and  writings  will  serve  to  make  this  plainer. 

Hawthorne  was  of  excellent  New  England  blood.  His 
ancestry  went  back  to  the  Major  William  Hawthorne  who 
was  prominent  in  Colonial  days  as  a  legislator  and  warrior. 
The  romancer  refers  to  him  in  the  Preface  to  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter"  as  his  "grave,  bearded,  sable-cloaked,  and 
steeple-crowned  progenitor,  who  came  so  early  with  his 
Bible  and  his  sword,  and  trod  the  unworn  streets  with  such 
a  stately  port,  and  made  so  large  a  figure  as  a  man  of  war 
and  peace."  Both  father  and  grandfather  were  sea  cap- 

99 


ioo  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

tains,  an  interesting  fact  for  its  suggestion  of  their  heredi 
tary  influence  on  his  work  —  an  influence,  however,  not 
easy  to  discover.  Hawthorne  in  the  same  Preface  says  of 
them  :  "From  father  to  son  for  above  a  hundred  years 
they  followed  the  sea  :  a  gray-bearded  shipmaster  in  each 
generation  retiring  from  the  quarter-deck  to  the  homestead, 
while  a  boy  of  fourteen  took  the  hereditary  position  before 
the  mast,  confronting  the  salt  spray  and  the  gale  which 
had  blustered  against  his  sire  and  grandsire,"  and  he  goes 
on  with  quiet  humor  to  imagine  these  his  forebears  as  con 
temptuous  over  their  descendant  who  had  become  a  writer  of 
"  story  books,"  exclaiming,  "  Why,  the  degenerate  fellow 
might  as  well  have  been  a  fiddler  !  "  In  much  the  same 
spirit,  humorously  satirical,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  refers  to 
himself  more  than  once  as  a  white-fingered,  weak  offspring 
of  a  hardy  race  of  lighthouse  builders  and  keepers. 

His  mother's  family,  the  Mannings,  was  also  one  which 
had  settled  in  New  England  in  the  seventeenth  century,  so 
that  the  New  England  consciousness  (much  more  a  definite 
thing  then  than  now)  was  deep  in^his  nature,  and  by  both  he 
was  well  fitted  to  become  the  revealer  of  the  historic  New 
England  conscience,  working  out  in  the  persons  of  his 
spiritual  tragedies. 

Mrs.  Hawthorne,  Nathaniel's  mother,  was  a  quiet  widow, 
whose  husband  died  four  years  after  the  son's  birth,  and 
who  led,]during  his  boyhood  and  upbringing,  a  very  secluded 
life.  His  schooling,  provided  for  by  an  uncle,  was  secured 
at  private  schools  in  Salem,  the  quaint  old  Massachusetts 
seaport  which  was  his  native  place  ;  and  later  from  a  tutor 
who  fitted  him  for  college.  When  he  was  nine,  the  Haw- 
thornes  removed  to  Sebago  Lake  in  Maine,  where  the  mother 
had  inherited  an  estate,  and  for  some  years  Nathaniel  had 


Hawthorne 

the  advantage  there  of  a  wholesome  country  life,  —  all  of 
which  he  greatly  enjoyed,  being  a  boy  of  lively  nature,  much 
given  to  athletic  exercises,  and  fond  of  sport.  He  returned, 
however,  to  Salem  to  fit  for  college,  and  he  has  left  words  to 
show  that  he  regarded  the  proposed  scholastic  training  as  of 
dubious  good.  "  Four  years  of  my  life  is  a  great  deal  to 
throw  away,"  he  declares,  and  the  remark  has  its  amuse 
ment  for  us  who  look  back  upon  him  as  a  great  man  of 
letters,  all  his  days  a  dreamer  over  books. 

When  the  family  resumed  their  Salem  life,  the  recluse 
habits  of  the  mother  were  intensified.  Hawthorne  himself 
narrates  that  for  years  she  never  came  to  the  family  table 
for  her  meals,  which  were  served  in  her  room.  A  single 
fact  like  this  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  the  excessive  exclusion 
of  her  manner  of  existence.  It  is  not  hard  to  fancy  that 
this  would  react  upon  the  temperament  of  a  sensitive  boy 
with  the  brooding  tendency  in  his  blood.  Yet  too  much  of 
it  must  not  be  made  :  earlier  biographers  of  Hawthorne 
were  so  inclined,  but  the  more  correct  portrait  allots  to  him 
his  full  share  of  playfulness  and  healthy  interests.  As  his 
Maine  experiences  witness,  he  liked  outdoor  life,  went 
fishing  and  shooting,  kept  animal  pets,  and  —  so  far 
from  being  a  forlorn,  neglected  lad,  a  kind  of  David  Copper- 
field  —  was  rather  petted  by  the  family  relatives.  He  read 
some  of  the  standard  literature  in  these  'early  days  in  a 
rambling,  ruminative  way  :  we  learn  that  "The  Pilgrim's 
Progress  "  was  much  in  his  hands,  as  were  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  —  good  fodder  for  the  assimilative  period.  The 
school  terms  were  varied  by  vacationings  that  kept  body 
and  brain  in  wholesome  balance.  Altogether,  we  may  see 
Hawthorne's  boyhood  as  a  normal  and  enjoyable  one, 
whatever  the  idiosyncrasies  of  his  home. 


i  CM.  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

During  his  course  at  Bowdoin  College,  in  Maine,  which  he 
entered  in  1821,  being  in  his  eighteenth  year,  he  was  of  a 
convivial  disposition,  playing  cards,  giving  wine  parties,  and 
taking  a  hand  at  college  sports  and  pranks,  though  we  do 
not  find  him  either  neglecting  his  studies  or  becoming  em 
broiled  with  the  authorities,  after  the  manner  of  so  many 
embryo  men  of  letters  in  their  college  days.  Physically,  by 
the  testimony  of  his  son  Julian,  he  was  at  this  time  athletic 
and  handsome.  "  He  was  five  feet,  ten  and  a  half  inches  in 
height,  broad-shouldered,  but  of  a  light,  athletic  build,  not 
weighing  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  His 
limbs  were  beautifully  formed,  and  the  molding  of  his  neck 
and  throat  was  as  fine  as  anything  in  antique  sculpture.  His 
hair,  which  had  a  long,  curving  wave  in  it,  approached  black 
ness  in  color ;  his  head  was  large  and  grandly  developed ; 
his  eyebrows  were  dark  and  heavy,  with  a  superb  arch  and 
space  beneath.  His  nose  was  straight  but  the  contour  of 
his  chin  was  Roman.  .  .  .  His  eyes  were  large,  dark  blue, 
brilliant,  and  full  of  varied  expression.  Bayard  Taylor  used 
to  say  that  they  were  the  only  eyes  he  had  ever  known  flash 
fire.  .  .  .  His  complexion  was  delicate  and  transparent, 
rather  dark  than  light,  with  a  ruddy  tinge  in  the  cheeks  .  .  . 
up  to  the  time  he  was  forty  years  old,  he  could  clear  a  height 
of  five  feet  at  a  standing  jump.  His  voice,  which  was  low 
and  deep  in  ordinary  conversation,  had  astounding  volume 
when  he  chose  to  give  full  vent  to  it ;  ...  it  was  not  a  bel 
low,  but  had  the  searching  and  electrifying  quality  of  the 
blast  of  a  trumpet." 

His  college  friends  included  the  poet  Longfellow,  Hora 
tio  Bridge,  afterwards  distinguished  in  the  naval  sendee,  and 
Franklin  Pierce,  who  was  to  be  President  of  the  United 
States,  and  whose  stanch  friendship  with  Hawthorne  lasted 


Hawthorne  103 

throughout  their  lives.  Bridge,  too,  was  always  an  intimate, 
and  has  left  a  book  about  his  friend  containing  valuable  side 
lights  upon  his  character.  In  another  Preface,  that  to  the 
"Snow  Image,"  which  is  addressed  to  Bridge,  Hawthorne 
refers  to  this  life  at  "a  country  college,  —  gathering  blue 
berries  in  study  hours,  under  those  tall  academic  pines,  or 
watching  the  great  logs  as  they  tumbled  along  the  current 
of  the  Androscoggin,  or  shooting  pigeons  and  gray  squirrels 
in  the  woods ;  or  bat-fowling  in  the  summer  twilight ;  or 
catching  trout  in  the  shadowy  little  stream  which,  I  suppose, 
is  still  wandering  river-ward  through  the  forest  —  though 
you  and  I  will  never  cast  a  line  in  it  again  —  two  idle  lads, 
in  short  (as  we  need  not  fear  to  acknowledge  now),  doing 
a  hundred  things  that  the  faculty  never  heard  of,  or  else  it 
had  been  the  worse  for  us,  —  still  it  was  your  prognostic  of 
your  friend's  destiny,  that  he  was  to  be  a  writer  of  fiction." 
One  reads  with  a  half  smile,  thinking  how  different  would 
be  the  confession  as  to  his  daily  doings  of  a  student  in  our 
day. 

Hawthorne  did  not  shine  brightly  in  his  college  work,  and 
seems  to  have  shirked  what  he  did  not  like :  he  was  grad 
uated  decently,  but  not  cum  laude.  In  spite  of  the  pleas 
antly  normal  manner  of  his  early  career,  however,  a  certain 
effect  of  aloofness  in  him  is  produced  by  reading  all  the 
records.  He  himself  has  testified  to  the  recluse  manner  of 
his  existence  on  his  return  to  Salem,  after  leaving  Bowdoin, 
in  order  to  devote  his  time  to  writing  and  not  to  be  heard 
of  by  the  world  for  a  long  terra  of  years,  —  more  than  a 
decade.  "  For  months  together,"  he  says,  "  I  scarcely  held 
human  intercourse  outside  my  own  family,  seldom  going  out 
except  at  twilight,  or  only  to  take  the  nearest  way  to  the 
most  convenient  solitude."  I  have  italicized  the  sentence 


104  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

which  seems  to  me  to  be  one  of  those  unconscious  flash 
lights  upon  a  character,  of  prime  importance  in  studying 
this  strange  man.  However  social,  even  convivial,  he  may 
have  appeared  to  his  college  mates,  no  man  whose  nature 
did  not  possess  a  quality  of  remoteness  and  self-sufficiency 
could  have  instinctively  followed  such  a  course.  To  be  sure, 
he  has  told  us  that,  "living  in  solitude  till  the  fullness  of  time 
had  come,  I  still  kept  the  dew  of  my  youth  and  the  fresh 
ness  of  my  heart."  Doubtless,  this  period  of  lonely  incuba 
tion  was  priceless  in  its  results ;  but  the  mind  reverts  to 
those  words  :  "  Seldom  going  out  except  at  twilight,"  and 
again  finds  there  something  at  once  explanatory  and  curi 
ously  suggestive  of  a  nature  whose  grave  retrospective  brood 
ing  and  constant  commerce  and  preoccupation  with  the 
great  questions  of  individual  conscience  are  reflected  in  the 
external  habit  of  life. 

From  1825,  when  he  took  his  Bowdoin  degree,  to  1837, 
the  date  of  the  appearance  of  "Twice-told  Tales,"  Haw 
thorne  remained  in  the  family  home  in  Salem,  lost  to  the 
public  eye,  absorbed  in  his  literary  experiments,  while  his 
fellow-collegian,  Longfellow,  advanced  to  position  and  fame. 
The  young  Salem  man  meditated,  wrote,  burned  what  had 
been  written,  rewrote  his  tales,  and  with  a  single-eyed  devo 
tion  to  his  art,  rare  and  beautiful  in  these  days  of  hurried 
execution  and  haste  to  get  into  print  (like  the  modern 
college  boy's  haste  to  get  out  and  into  life),  served  his  stern 
apprenticeship  to  letters,  thus  securing  a  command  of  his 
tools  which  was  to  reveal  him  in  the  first  book  he  allowed 
to  be  given  to  the  public,  as  a  trained  and  accomplished 
master.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  he  showed  this 
perseverance  with  practically  no  encouragement  from  any 
one  outside.  He  wrought  to  transmute  his  dreams  and 


Hawthorne  105 

imaginings  into  the  form  of  fiction,  drawing  on  as  slender 
a  capital  of  experience  as  ever  did  one  who  was  to  be 
come  a  great  writer.  But  that  lack  was  more  than  com 
pensated  for  by  one  of  the  imaginations  which  can  body 
forth  the  realities  of  the  inner  spirit.  In  his  room,  high  up 
in  the  ancestral  home,  Hawthorne  labored  patiently,  quietly, 
while  his  brothers  and  sisters,  recluses  like  himself,  left 
him  much  alone.  "  Here,"  as  he  expresses  it,  "  I  sat 
a  long,  long  time,  waiting  for  the  world  to  know  me,  and 
sometimes  wondering  why  it  did  not  know  me  sooner ;  or 
whether  it  would  ever  know  me  at  all,  at  least,  till  I  were  in 
my  grave."  And  he  declares  that  by  turns  he  was  glad  and 
sad  in  his  work  :  "  But  oftener  I  was  happy,"  —  a  statement 
we  are  pleased  to  get,  since  the  picture  as  a  whole  is  somber 
enough. 

One  thing,  and  perhaps  one  thing  only,  was  in  Haw 
thorne's  favor  during  those  years  when  he  was  endeavoring 
to  get  a  hearing  as  a  writer  :  the  competition  was  little  com 
pared  with  the  present  day.  living's  fiction  work  was  long 
since  published  and  familiar  to  the  world ;  Poe's  wonderful 
short  stories  had  not  been  given  to  the  public.  There  was 
ample  room  for  a  really  distinctive,  new  writer  of  fiction.  To 
counteract  this  advantage,  the  market  was  of  course  uncer 
tain,  limited ;  for  literary  wares  but  little  comparatively  was 
paid.  Hawthorne  received  thirty-five  dollars  apiece^for  the 
magazine  use  of  his  early  tales  which  have  since  become 
classic.  The  beginning  of  his  career  was  undertaken  on 
conditions  on  the  whole  chilling  and  unpromisefuL 

Several  tentative  performances  preceded  the  sure  ground 
on  which  he  walked  with  the  "Twice-told  Tales":  the 
novel  "  Fanshawe,"  soon  withdrawn  from  circulation  after 
being  brought  out  at  his  own  expense,  —  a  story  of  college  life 


io6  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

decidedly  amateurish  and  having  little  of  the  typical 
thornesque  distinction ;  and  a  collection  known  as  "  Seven 
Tales  of  my  Native  Land,"  toward  which  the  publishers 
took  the  usual  skeptical  attitude,  and  whose  sheets  were 
finally  condemned  to  the  flames  as  ruthlessly  as  if  they  were 
so  many  Salem  witches  and  he  one  of  his  stem  ancestors 
who  regarded  them  as  of  the  evil  one.  Some  of  his  tales, 
afterward  to  be  published  in  the  volume  which  was  to  show 
his  true  quality,  were  accepted  gladly  enough  by  such  maga 
zines  as  The  Token,  The  New  England,  and  the  Knicker 
bocker  ;  but  they  drew  little  attention,  did  not  spread  his 
reputation ;  the  audience  waiting  on  periodical  literature  at 
this  time  was  small  and  scattered.  All  through  this  forma 
tive  time  Hawthorne  had  no  position  that  meant  income  or 
regular  enforced  employment,  save  that  in  1836,  the  year 
before  the  "  Twice-told  Tales  "  were  published,  he  became 
editor  of  the  American  Magazine  of  Useful  and  Entertain 
ing  Knowledge,  a  place  of  drudgery  he  endured  for  but  two 
years.  With  this  exception,  Hawthorne  to  the  Philistine  eye 
must  have  appeared  as  a  young  man  sitting  at  home  and 
idling  away  a  precious  portion  of  his  life,  —  the  very  years 
which  should  have  been  devoted  to  active  effort  for  what  is 
known  as  "  getting  on  "  in  his  career.  To  us,  as  we  look 
back  upon  it  in  the  light  of  what  was  to  follow,  it  is  plain 
that  he  could  not  have  put  his  time  to  better  use. 

The  "Twice-told  Tales"  upon  their  publication  made 
no  stir  in  the  literary  world ;  such  more  often  than  not  is 
the  fate  of  works  destined  to  take  a  firm  place  in  literature. 
Hawthorne  did  not  have  the  experience  of  Byron  who  woke 
up  one  morning  to  find  himself  famous.  Not  only  was  the 
book  not  a  popular  success,  but  it  would  be  an  exaggeration 
to  say  that  it  received  general  critical  recognition.  Long- 


Hawthorne  107 

fellow,  to  be  sure,  gave  it  a  cordial  reception  in  a  critique  in 
The  North  American  Review,  glad  to  commend  the  work  of 
a  college  friend  in  which  he  saw  distinguished  worth.  But 
it  was  only  slowly  and  in  a  small  way  that  the  approval  for 
which  every  author  is  anhungered  came  to  Hawthorne  at  this 
time.  Still,  the  effect  of  this  publication  was  an  excellent 
good  thing,  for  it  drew  enough  attention  to  him  to  get  him 
somewhat  out  of  his  shell;  he  recalls  that  he  was  "com 
pelled  to  come  out  of  my  owl's  nest  and  lionize  in  a  small 
way."  In  this  wider  social  contact  the  noteworthy  thing 
was  his  meeting  with  Sophia  Peabody,  of  the  noted  Massa 
chusetts  family  which  has  given  numerous  important  citizens, 
men  and  women,  to  the  commonwealth.  To  this  lady  he 
became  engaged  in  1838 — the  year  after  the  book  was 
printed  —  although  his  circumstances  made  it  unwise  to 
marry  until  four  years  later,  in  1842. 

The  influence  of  this  noble  woman  upon  Hawthorne  was 
in  all  ways  such  as  to  make  his  home  life  the  sweetest, 
brightest  part  of  his  somber  career.  Many  other  testimonies 
to  this  are  left  by  his  son,  his  son-in-law,  and  his  various 
biographers.  Hawthorne  worshiped  his  wife,  and  found 
not  only  rest  and  consolation,  but  strength  and  inspiration 
in  her  society.  A  man  whose  nature  was  not  dependent  nor 
widely  affectional,  he  yet  leaned  upon  her.  "  Thou  art  the 
only  person  in  the  world,"  he  wrote  her,  "  that  ever  was 
necessary  to  me.  I  think  I  was  always  more  at  ease  alone 
than  in  anybody's  company  until  I  knew  thee."  These  are 
words  as  significant,  as  revelatory,  as  those  quoted  before 
concerning  his  recluse  habit.  In  any  comprehension  of 
the  strange  character  and  unique  genius  of  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne,  the  part  played  by  his  wife  cannot  be  ignored,  — 
and  it  is  one  of  the  noblest  parts  enacted  by  any  companion 


io8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

to  a  veritable  man  of  letters,  a  part  often  no  doubt  more 
trying  than  the  world  will  ever  know.  It  is  certain  that  the 
happiest  side  of  his  lonesome  life  journey  was  experienced 
in  his  home  :  and  the  best  side  of  his  nature  was  exposed  to 
the  home  circle;  there  is  testimony  and  to  spare  bearing  on 
this  conclusion. 

The  year  after  his  engagement  to  Miss  Peabody,  Haw 
thorne  was  made  weigher  and  gauger  in  the  Boston  Custom 
House,  a  post  which  brought  him  into  relations  with  Ban 
croft,  the  historian,  and  not,  one  would  surmise,  particularly 
attractive  to  him  or  suitable  to  the  powers  of  a  man  of  such 
parts.  Yet  the  quiet  man  of  letters  made  a  good  executive 
in  this  and  other  subsequent  positions  of  a  practical  nature. 
Hawthorne,  like  Emerson,  had  a  practicality,  a  shrewdness, 
which  came  into  play  in  his  contact  with  the  material  world. 
He  once  said  that  he  liked  to  get  into  touch  with  the  real 
world,  —  to  meet  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men;  not 
perhaps  so  much  as  their  fellow  human  being  as  in  the  role 
of  the  psychologist  seeking  to  acquire  material  to  use  in  his 
romances.  This  Boston  work  took  him  into  the  city  for  two 
years ;  it  gave  him  some  valuable  studies  of  New  England 
character,  as  his  books  show,  though  nothing  more  intimate 
and  typical  than  those  furnished  by  Salem,  —  for  such  a 
romance,  for  example,  as  "The  House  of  Seven  Gables." 
One  smiles  in  reflecting  how  little  at  this  juncture  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  a  man  in  the  middle  thirties,  his  first  book 
(a  representative  one,  too)  published  with  no  eclat  as  he 
went  quietly  about  a  daily  practical  employment,  was  recog 
nizable  as  the  greatest  American  romancer  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  one  of  the  very  few  men  who  was  to  shed  unfailing 
luster  upon  our  native  literature. 

Before  returning  to  Salem,  when  he  gave  up  the  Boston 


Hawthorne  109 

office  which,  however  well  he  performed  his  duties,  was  no 
congenial  task,  —  "a  very  grievous  thraldom,"  he  character 
izes  it,  —  Hawthorne  gave  an  expression  of  the  idealism  that 
was  in  him  by  joining  the  famous  Brook  Farm  community, 
remaining  there  for  something  over  a  year.  This  fact  calls 
up  visions  of  Margaret  Fuller,  Emerson,  Curtis,  Ripley,  and 
others  of  a  group  whose  attempt  to  combine  philosophy  and 
practical  farming  is  one  of  the  witnesses  to  that  wonderful 
strain  of  transcendentalism  in  the  Yankee  make-up  which 
did  so  much  for  our  earlier  letters.  Hawthorne  tried  the 
experiment  but  a  short  time,  perhaps  because  that  same 
practical  streak  in  him  was  offended  by  some  of  the  incon 
gruous  doings  at  Brook  Farm,  so  humorously  described  by 
Curtis  and  others ;  agriculture  and  asceticism,  however 
acceptable  to  Margaret  Fuller,  did  not  seem  to  him  a  natu 
ral  combination.  But  there  were  fruits  literary,  if  not  actual, 
from  this  Brook  Farm  sojourn,  as  we  shall  see.  He  returned 
to  Salem  in  1842  to  marry  Miss  Peabody  and  settle  in  the 
Old  Manse,  that  historic  house  of  memories  which  has  now 
a  magical  sound  because  of  its  associations.  Here  he  knew 
the  happiness  of  a  home  which  at  once  protected  him  from 
the  world  and  kept  his  lonely  genius  tempered  and  genial- 
ized  by  the  household  hearts  that  were  his  own.  Here  chil 
dren  were  given  him ;  and  his  son  Julian  and  his  daughter 
Rose,  Mrs.  George  Parsons  Lathrop,  have  left  us  valuable 
aids  to  the  study  of  their  father.  Here  he  walked  the  woods 
and  fields  or  rowed  his  boat  on  the  beautiful  Musketaquid 
River.  Here,  in'  a  word,  he  tasted  the  best  of  the  human 
lot;  "nobody  but  we  ever  knew  what  it  is  to  be  married," 
he  once  wrote  his  wife ;  and  these  little  heart  glimpses  are 
all  the  more  precious  to  set  over  against  such  descriptions 
of  Hawthorne's  carriage  toward  others,  as  that  by  Curtis, 


no  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

where  he  states  that  "Hawthorne,  a  statue  of  Night  and 
Silence,  sat  a  little  removed,  under  a  portrait  of  Dante,  gaz 
ing  imperturbably  upon  the  group." 

The  year  of  his  marriage  appeared  the  second  volume  of 
his  "Twice-told  Tales."  His  residence  at  Concord  with 
the  manifesto  he  had  made  in  the  first  collection  of  his 
stories,  brought  him  the  congenial  society  of  that  notable 
coterie  of  folk  whose  intellectual  interests  and  literary  gifts 
made  them  distinctive  in  our  letters ;  among  them,  Thoreau, 
Emerson,  Margaret  Fuller,  Alcott,  and  Channing.  Even  unto 
this  day,  to  say  nothing  of  its  great  memories,  Concord,  with 
its  natural  beauty  and  its  democratic  ideals,  the  high-bred 
simplicity  of  its  social  life,  is  not  like  unto  other  towns.  It 
is  a  natural  Mecca  for  the  literary  student  in  this  country. 
There  was  something  peculiarly  apt  in  such  an  environment 
for  a  nature  like  Hawthorne,  with  its  self-dependence,  its 
liking  for  privacy,  its  necessary  but  willing  adoption  of  a 
frugal  mode  of  living.  His  contentment  in  his  home  is 
expressed  in  letters  again  and  again.  He  says  that  he  is 
thankful  for  the  early  unhappiness,  that  his  present  joy  may 
stand  in  the  higher  relief. 

But  the  reception  of  the  second  "  Twice-told  Tales "  (a 
title,  by  the  way,  taken  from  Shakespeare) ,  though  critically 
there  was  a  gain  over  the  first  volume,  was  by  no  means 
such  as  to  bring  much  money  to  the  master  of  the  Manse. 
Hawthorne,  after  four  years  of  it,  felt  the  necessity  of  going 
back  to  Salem  (which  he  by  no  means  loved)  as  surveyor  of 
customs,  a  position  the  Democratic  administration  extended 
him  through  his  influence  with  Pierce.  For  three  years 
(1846-1849)  he  was  thus  occupied,  and  literature  suffered 
accordingly  ;  the  usual  political  shift  threw  him  out  of  em 
ployment,  so  that  he  could  return  to  Concord  and  to  fiction 


Hawthorne  1 1 1 

writing.  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  was  the  golden  result  of  this 
enforced  leisure ;  if  all  losses  of  political  position  were 
followed  by  like  results,  they  could  be  borne  with  equanim 
ity.  Then,  for  the  first  time,  the  invigorating  light  of  fame 
shone  upon  him  in  the  retired  Manse ;  this  novel  at  once 
gained  a  wide  recognition  which  was  not,  like  so  much  of 
sudden  success,  to  die  down  as  suddenly.  That  Hawthorne 
basked  and  expanded  in  the  hard-won  victory  may  be  be 
lieved  ;  he  was  nearer  fifty  than  forty  years  old  when  his 
greatest  book  brought  him  sure  place  and  reward  ;  a  quarter- 
century  of  work  and  waiting  lay  behind  him.  It  was  a 
triumph  late-given,  but  a  triumph  none  the  less,  —  all  the 
more,  perhaps,  for  its  tardy  coming.  Family  reasons  now 
led  him  to  remove  to  the  little  red  house  at  Lenox,  Massa 
chusetts,  in  the  beautiful  hill  country  where,  under  more 
cheerful  circumstances  than  he  ever  penned  a  piece  of  fic 
tion,  he  wrote  "  The  House  of  Seven  Gables."  Mr.  James  T. 
Fields,  of  the  famous  Boston  house  of  Ticknor  &  Fields,  was 
besieging  Hawthorne  for  another  book,  in  view  of  the  great 
success  of  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  ;  it  may  be  going  too  far  to 
see  in  the  fact  that  this  new  novel  does  not  grapple  quite  so 
grimly  with  the  great  spiritual  tragedies,  a  reflex  of  the  sun 
nier  environment  which  the  romancer  was  now  enjoying. 
Sure  it  is  that  "  The  House  of  Seven  Gables  "  has  for  a  color 
scheme  a  delicate  mystic  gray,  relieved  by  rose  tints  of 
poetry.  It  was  during  the  Lenox  residence  that  "  The 
Scarlet  Letter  "  was  given  to  the  world,  and  perhaps  its  re 
ception  also  helped  his  mood.  After  Lenox,  there  was  a 
brief  sojourn  of  a  year  or  thereabouts  at  West  Newton,  one 
of  the  outlying  communities  within  easy  reach  of  Boston, 
yet  offering  the  attractions  of  country  air  and  economic  liv 
ing.  Here  the  third  of  the  long  romances  was  written,  "  The 


H2  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Blithedale  Romance,"  a  story  lacking  the  historic  perspective 
and  the  atmospheric  quality  of  the  two  preceding  it,  yet  very 
powerful  in  its  way,  and  most  interesting  for  the  realism  with 
which  Hawthorne  used  his  Brook  Farm  experiences;  for 
this  tale  depicts  the  life  there,  and  against  this  background  a 
tragic  narrative  unfolds. 

In  1852  Hawthorne  and  his  own  came  back  to  Concord, 
which  was  to  be  henceforth  his  permanent  home.  He  pur 
chased  the  Wayside,  another  house  in  Concord,  opposite 
Emerson's,  and  therein  set  up  his  household  gods.  But  he 
was  not  long  to  remain  unmolested,  for  the  next  year  (1853) 
he  was  sent  as  our  consul  to  Liverpool.  Pierce,  his  college 
comrade,  had  become  the  Democratic  President ;  and  the 
offer  of  the  post  followed  naturally  enough.  Hawthorne 
had  already  written  an  autobiography  of  Pierce  for  cam 
paign  purposes,  and  the  consulship  was  an  expression  of  grati 
tude.  It  was,  however,  by  no  means  a  glittering  emolument, 
and  one  rather  begrudges  Hawthorne,  in  view  of  his  peculiar 
powers,  the  four  years  thus  passed  in  England.  His  literary 
productivity  amounted  to  little  while  he  was  there ;  socially 
he  made  no  stir,  as  had  Irving  before,  as  did  Lowell  after 
ward.  In  truth,  Hawthorne  seems  to  have  been  antipathetic 
to  the  British.  He  did  not  even  meet  the  literary  represen 
tative  men,  his  natural  peers.  This  and  a  later  residence  in 
England  gave  him  the  material  for  the  book, "  Our  Old  Eng 
lish  Home,"  published  in  1863,  the  year  before  his  death; 
in  which  there  is  not  to  be  found  the  sympathy  and  insight 
one  might  have  expected  from  a  writer  so  sensitive  to  the 
charm  of  the  past  of  his  own  New  England. 

His  consular  duties  were  not  of  the  sort  congenial  to  his 
temperament,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  unable  to  conquer 
his  native  disability  to  free  social  contact  and  intercourse ; 


Hawthorne  113 

although  along  with  this  trait  went,  as  we  have  noted,  a  sort 
of  professional  interest  in  mankind  as  so  much  material  for 
a  writer.  After  the  four  years  of  the  consulate,  spent  in 
what  he  grimly  describes  as  a  "  blighted  chamber,"  Haw 
thorne  went  down  into  Italy,  where  he  remained  between 
one  and  two  years,  basking  in  the  poetry  of  that  "  woman 
land,"  keenly  responsive  to  its  wonderful  beauty.  "The 
Italian  Notebooks  "  are  eloquent  witness  to  how  much  in 
spiration  he  received  from  the  country  which  has  so  often 
stirred  men  of  the  English  race  to  imaginative  expression  of 
some  kind.  It  was  while  here  that  he  gathered  material  for, 
and  ruminated  upon,  the  fourth  and  last  of  his  great  group 
of  romances,  namely,  "  The  Marble  Faun." 

He  returned  to  England  from  Italy  for  a  further  sojourn 
of  a  year  or  more,  and  finally,  in  1860,  came  back  to  his 
native  land,  after  a  seven  years'  absence.  The  Civil  War 
had  not  formally  been  declared,  but  the  country  was  already 
in  the  throes  of  the  great  struggle.  Hawthorne's  attitude 
was  for  a  New  Englander  somewhat  unsympathetic;  with 
an  intellectual  coolness  which  was  characteristic,  he  saw 
both  sides  of  the  question,  and  was  not  a  Northern  parti 
san.  His  warm  friendship  for  Pierce  the  Democrat  was  an 
element  in  the  position  he  took.  He  dedicated  one  of  his 
books  to  Pierce,  and  when  his  friends  besought  him,  in  view 
of  the  situation,  to  omit  the  dedication,  since  it  would  cer 
tainly  injure  the  success  of  the  book,  he  refused  to  do  so 
and,  as  had  been  prophesied,  the  volume  met  with  angry 
opposition  for  that  reason.  Hawthorne  at  this  juncture  offers 
a  sharp  contrast  with  such  other  New  England  writers  as 
Whittier  and  Lowell  whose  early  song  flamed  and  thrilled 
with  a  fervid  patriotism. 

It  has  been  said  that  every  American  who  remains  abroad 
i 


H4  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

at  least  seven  years  will  never  reassume  his  nationality  with 
so  much  intimacy  and  relish  as  before  his  travels.  This  is 
certainly  not  true  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.  He  loved  New 
England,  and  on  his  return  to  the  quaint  Wayside  at  Con 
cord,  he  gathered  his  own  about  him  and  settled  down  in 
great  contentment  to  busy  himself  with  his  literary  plans, 
and  enjoy  the  home  life  which  always  brought  him  the 
greatest  happiness.  There,  health  and  strength,  slowly  ebbed, 
and  four  years  later,  in  1864,  he  closed  his  mortal  activity, 
having  lived  two  months  less  than  sixty  years.  Athletic  as 
he  was  by  gift  of  nature,  Hawthorne's  health  began  to  de 
cline  shortly  after  his  coming  back  to  America.  When  at 
length  work  could  no  longer  be  done,  although  arranged  for 
or  promised,  a  summer  trip  in  the  White  Mountains  was 
devised  by  the  anxious  family,  and  his  old-time  friend,  ex- 
President  Pierce,  offered  himself  as  companion.  But  at 
Plymouth,  New  Hampshire,  his  strength  gave  out,  and  he 
passed  away  at  the  inn  there  in  the  night.  As  human  lives 
average,  Hawthorne's  was  a  happy,  uneventful  one.  He 
died  in  full  knowledge  that  a  just  renown  was  his ;  he  had 
seen  the  labor  of  his  hands  and  could  be  satisfied.  He  was 
spared  the  feebleness  and  helplessness  of  extreme  old  age ; 
he  was  full  of  literary  plans  to  the  last.  At  the  time  of  his 
death  he  was  at  work  upon  "Septimius  Felton,"  and  the  in 
complete  manuscript  was  laid  in  his  coffin.  The  theme  of 
this  romance,  published  posthumously  in  1872,  was  the 
possibility  of  solving  the  riddle  of  immortality ;  one  befitting 
a  man  who  was  himself  on  the  very  verge  of  the  eternal. 

It  were  idle  to  deny  that  the  life  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne 
does  not  attract  one  to  him  as  a  man  so  warmly  and  genially 
as  one  is  attracted  to  personalities  like  Charles  Lamb  or 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  But  there  was  much  that  was  ad- 


Hawthorne  115 

mirable  in  Hawthorne's  character.  He  was  in  his  work  the 
New  England  conscience  made  flesh ;  surely  an  important 
role  and  mission.  And  his  life  when  viewed  with  insight 
and  sympathy  will  be  felt  to  be  in  key  with  his  work.  It 
was  his  business  to  study  the  soul  of  mankind  that  he  might 
quicken  its  sense  of  the  tremendous  spiritual  problems  that 
make  life  not  a  pleasure-ground  but  a  battle-ground,  upon 
which  character  shall  be  proved  and  the  development  of  the 
race  settled.  If  he  walked  much  alone  as  a  man,  if  he 
seemed  to  raise  a  barrier  between  himself  and  others,  this 
can  be  understood  in  one  who  only  in  lonesomeness  of  the 
spirit  could  see  and  tell  of  the  tragic  verities  of  the  soul. 

The  genius  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  expressed  itself  in 
two  main  forms  of  imaginative  writing —  in  the  long  romance 
and  the  tale  or  short  story.  In  my  treatment  of  Irving  and 
Poe  the  point  that  the  short  story  is  a  distinct  form  of  fic 
tion  has  already  been  made.  In  general,  the  great  short 
story  writer  is  not  a  good  novelist,  and  vice  versa.  But 
Hawthorne  excelled  in  both  forms.  He  began  with  tales, 
and  the  romances  were  of  his  more  mature  life  and  art ; 
but  he  never  ceased  to  pour  into  the  short  story  mold  some 
of  his  choicest  and  most  striking  conceptions.  They  are  to 
be  found  in  the  first  and  second  series  of  the  "  Twice-told 
Tales,"  in  "  The  Snow  Image  and  Other  Tales,"  in  "  Mosses 
from  an  Old  Manse,"  and  in  the  two  collections  for  chil 
dren,  "A  Wonder  Book"  and  "Tanglewood  Tales."  Per 
haps  nothing  in  the  tale  form  is  more  characteristic  than 
such  sketches  as  "The  Snow  Image,"  which  is  quoted  at 
the  end  of  this  article,  or  "The  Great  Stone  Face,"  in  both 
of  which  a  moral  lesson  is  conveyed  allegorically  in  a  poetic 
setting  of  story,  told  with  the  quiet  perfection  of  manner 
and  with  all  the  skill  in  conveying  atmosphere  for  which  this 


n6  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

romancer  is  famed.  There  are  also  many  stories,  of  which 
"Doctor  Heidegger's  Experiment,"  "The  Great  Carbuncle," 
"Rappaccini's  Daughter,"  and  "  The  Minister's  Black  Veil" 
are  examples,  where  some  dark  secret  of  the  human  soul  is 
revealed  in  a  machinery  which  involves  some  use  or  hint  of 
the  supernatural,  and  is  only  saved  from  the  morbidity  dis 
played  by  a  Poe  through  the  strenuous  spiritual  implication. 
Again,  there  is  a  group  of  tales  possessing  a  kind  of  satiric 
humor  which  often  contains  a  touch  of  the  grimly  sardonic, 
to  wit:  "The  Celestial  Railroad,"  "  Feathertop,"  "The 
Intelligence  Office,"  and  many  others.  In  pieces  like  "  A 
Rill  from  a  Town  Pump,"  the  sweeter  and  more  kindly 
aspect  of  Hawthorne's  humor,  interblent  with  pathos,  is 
manifest,  and  the  reader  should  understand  that  while  the 
trend  of  this  man's  genius  was  toward  the  presentment  of 
the  more  somber  elements  of  life,  with  marked  emphasis 
upon  the  irony  of  fate  which  sets  a  melancholy  half  smile 
upon  the  narrator's  face,  he  wrote  not  a  few  sketches  wherein 
all  is  of  a  May-day  beauty,  tempered  but  not  darkened  by 
a  subtle  poetic  haze  of  sadness.  Nevertheless,  it  is  an 
autumn  atmosphere  for  the  most  part  with  Hawthorne.  He 
sees  life  as  a  "  twilight  piece,"  in  Browning's  phrase.  Yet 
autumn  and  the  twilight  have  their  loveliness  and  their 
wholesome  lessons;  and  this  master  of  romance  gives  us 
our  fill  of  both. 

In  many  of  the  tales,  Hawthorne's  love  for  nature  is 
delightfully  illustrated  by  his  descriptions  of  flowers,  of 
wood  and  field,  of  mountain,  and  stream,  and  blue  dome 
of  sky,  of  the  manifold  pageantry  of  the  shifting  months 
in  New  England.  The  local  color  is  faithfully  given  be 
cause  it  is  part  of  the  writer's  vision,  nay,  of  his  very 
soul. 


Hawthorne  117 

If  Hawthoraejaik  comparatiyelyjn  any  particular_of  the 
art  of  fiction,  it  is  injhe  handling  of  the  liumorous.  Some- 
"Hmes^for  the  present-day  reader  at  least,lrT  the  manner  of 
his  wit  there  is  a  suggestion  of  the  heavy  or  forced.  His 
nature  was  so  essentially  serious,  that  one  feels  him  to  be  a 
trifle  off  his  own  ground.  Sometimes,  too,  be  it  confessed, 
his  style  may  strike  us  as  a  little  formal ;  but  on  the  whplfi.it  is 
of  a  rare  "perfection,  showing  exquisite  adaptation  of  means 
tolm  end,  ajquiet  loveliness  of  movement,  together-with  a 
felicity  of  phrase  and  an  innate  feeling  for  the  dignity,  .grace, 
and  breeding  of  English  expression,  unmatched  by  any_other 
writer  of  American  fiction.  Indeed,  one  might  say  that  his 
^distinction  of  style  and  loftiness  of  spiritual  meaning  are  the 
two  main  strands  wherefrom  he  weaves  his  magic  cloth  of 
imagination. 

We  may  now  contrast  Hawthorne  the  writer  of  tales  and 
Hawthorne  the  maker  of  romance.  It  may  be  said  that  in 
the  tales  he  is  more  the  moralist,  at  times  frankly  didactic ; 
and  less  the  narrator  of  straight  stories  regarded  as  pieces 
of  human  experience  interesting  in  themselves.  We  have 
seen  that  of  necessity  there  is  less  of  narrative,  of  plot,  and 
of  character- complexity  in  the  short  story  than  in  the  long 
novel,  which,  with  its  many  characters  unfolding  and  inter 
acting  upon  each  other  in  many  scenes,  can  much  more 
easily  convey  a  feeling  of  the  largeness  of  life.  In  the 
tale,  atmosphere,  suggestion,  impressionism,  are  much  •  and 
as  Hawthorne  possessed  them  to  a  remarkable  degree,  he 
was  able  to  produce  truly  wonderful  short  stories. 

But  in  the  romances,  which  on  the  whole  stand  for  his 
greatest  achievement,  there  is  besides  such  an  embodiment 
of  spiritual  struggle  in  human  action  taking  place  upon  this 
larger  human  arena,  that  a  far  more  deeply  vital  effect  is 


n8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

produced,  and  the  reader  forgets  the  allegory  in  the  tre 
mendous  poignancy  and  pathos  of  the  picture. 

By  common  consent,  the  first  of  these  romances  in  time, 
"The  Scarlet  Letter,"  is  also  the  first  in  power  and  art. 
American  literature  points  to  it  with  a  just  pride  as  our 
highest  accomplishment  in  the  imaginative  depicting  of 
the  native  life.  The  nature  of  the  subject  helps  to  explain 
this  preeminence ;  it  is  a  study  of  the  New  England  past. 
In  that  past  Hawthorne  was  steeped;  he  knew  it,  he  felt 
it,  as  did  no  one  else  who  has  essayed  to  reproduce  it  in 
fiction.  He  saw  its  outer  physiognomy  and  its  inner  soul. 
The  bygone  times  of  his  own  section  and  people  offered  his 
imagination  just  the  stimulus  it  needed  to  play  over  the  sub 
ject  and  give  it  body  and  vital  air.  In  all  his  romance  work, 
there  is  the  subtle  idealization  of  character,  scene,  and  situa 
tion  which  results  in  the  symbolic  nature  of  outward  events 
being  brought  home  vividly  to  the  reader's  mind. 

Moreover,  still  explaining  why  "  The  Scarlet  Letter "  is 
peerless  among  the  Hawthorne  romances,  he   had   in  the 
problem  dealt  with  in  the  book,  one  that  fascinated  him, 
s  and  of  tremendous  significance  to  the  world — that  of  sin, 

£~  expiation,  purification  of  character.     Character,  Hawthorne 

/  teaches,  can  come  forth  cleansed  as  if  by  fire  from  the  fur- 

_          nace  of  sin  and  sorrow,  if  only  the  repentance  be  true  and 
open  confession  be  made ;  in  fact,  such  sorrowful  experience 
r  is  the  condition  of  character  growth.     Thus  as  the  Puritan 

maiden,  Hester,  develops  throiigh— sin  to  a  spiritual  peace, 
/?  the^thou^htful^ leaderj^while .,  enthralled  with  the  book  as 

\  a  soul  history,  becojnej_aware_o^_its_  symbolism.  There 
is~a  vast  surrounding  atmosphere  of  suggestion  to  the  story 
which  ^ddsT  imiriej,sui^lyjo_its  greatness.  As  story^  iMs 
eminently  simple,  yet  tremendous  in  its  very  simplicity, 


i 


Hawthorne  119 

because  of  its  mordjrutjyand  told  with  a  marvelous  unity 
of  effect,  so  that  all  is  harmonious  and  in  key.  The  realism 
oFlt  all  is  as  noticeable  as  its  idealism ;  nothing  in  all  _the 
ranges  of  fiction  is  more  vividly  true  than  the  scene  where 
Arthur  Dimmesdale  declares  his  sin  from  the  platform.  This 
romance  shows  that  in  works  of  art  of  the  highest  kind,  truth 
and  beauty  merge,  there  being  no  real  conflict  between  them. 
The  descriptions  in  this  novel  and  all  that  part  of  it  which 
might  be  called  background  are  felt  to  be  far  more  than 
description  and  background  in  the  usual  sense,  being  in  fact 
of  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  the  fabric.  Hawthorne  in  all 
his  work  makes  his  scenery  part  and  parcel  of  the  story ; 
I  can  think  of  nobody  else  in  English  fiction,  save  Thomas 
Hardy,  who  thus  interpenetrates  scene  and  character  so 
that  all  takes  on  one  tone,  nothing  can  be  spared.-— 

The  close  following  romance,  "The  House  of  Seven 
Gables,"  is  hardly  less  characteristic  of  Hawthorne,  though 
of  far  less  spiritual  bigness  and  importance.  It  is  interesting 
and  curious  to  know  that  he  preferred  it  to  "The  Scarlet 
Letter."  In  this  book  again  the  romancer  is  dealing  with 
things  he  knew  intimately  and  deeply  felt.  To  express  them 
was  germane  to  his  genius.  The  theme  is  the  tragedy  of 
heredity,  the  sins  of  the  fathers  working  out  in  after  times. 
More  specifically,  in  Judge  Pyncheon  we  have  a  masterful 
portrait  of  pride  and  its  downfall,  along  with  the  suggestion 
of  the  household  where  malefic  influences  abound,  and  only 
the  sweeter  air  let  in  by  healthy  young  love  and  the  banish 
ment  of  an  old  taint  of  evil  conduct,  can  bring  in  the  better 
kingdom.  His  wonderful  gift  for  atmosphere  is  nowhere 
better  displayed  than  in  this  story;  the  old  gabled  house 
itself  might  be  called  the  central  figure  of  the  plot.  Its 
doors  and  windows  and  gabled  ends  are  like  human  hands 


I2O  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

and  eyes  telling,  with  many  a  wink  and  nod,  the  under- 
meaning  of  the  strange,  half  mystic  tale.  The  house  stands 
in  Salem,  and  its  identity  is  disputed  to-day ;  but  whichever 
the  house  pointed  out  to  the  visitor,  he  is  likely  to  be  con 
scious  of  a  great  feeling  of  disappointment,  —  and  no  wonder, 
since  no  mortal  structure  can  stand  for  that  lodge  of  the 
imagination  so  much  more  portentous  than  any  house  made 
by  hands. 

Hawthorne's  third  story,  "The  Blithedale  Romance,"  in 
which  the  heroine  Zenobia  has  been  said  to  be  drawn  from 
Margaret  Fuller,  a  charge  emphatically  denied  by  the  author, 
is  only  inferior  to  the  other  three  great  romances  because  of 
the  nature  of  the  subject,  and  the  consequent  failure  to 
arouse  Hawthorne  to  a  degree  of  imaginative  creation 
which  was  wont  to  follow  an  entirely  congenial  theme. 
The  story  is  of  contemporary  life ;  hence  it  lacks  the  magic 
of  the  dim  yet  potent  atmosphere  of  poetry  which  haunts 
the  tales  of  New  England's  past.  Again,  there  is  something 
of  the  satiric  spirit  in  his  portrayal  of  the  Brook  Farm  life, 
and  satire,  as  we  have  noted  before,  was  with  him  of  a  pecul 
iar  mordant  kind  never  altogether  acceptable.  The  Brook 
Farmers,  in  fact,  were  offended  by  the  manner  in  which  he 
handled  their  beloved  dream.  And  finally,  the  idea  of  the 
book  does  not  involve  so  fundamental  a  spiritual  problem  as 
do  the  other  books.  But  with  these  reservations,  "The 
Blithedale  Romance  "  is  a  powerful,  deeply  interesting  study, 
and  one  who  reads  the  story  for  story's  sake  will  find  that  it 
has  a  plot  which  closely  holds  the  attention,  and  is  indeed  at 
times  melodramatic,  as  in  the  description  of  Zenobia's  death 
and  the  tragic  finding  of  her  body.  The  underlying  teach 
ing  of  the  story  is,  as  expressed  in  his  own  words,  "  that  the 
whole  universe  and  Providence  and  Deity  to  boot  make 


Hawthorne  ill 

common  cause  against  a  woman  who  swerves  one  hair's 
breadth  out  of  the  beaten  path"  —  a  theme  closely  akin  to 
that  in  Hardy's  "Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles  "  —  indeed,  the 
same  theme  with  variations.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  Haw 
thorne  in  this  moving  romance  anticipates  a  whole  modern 
school  of  fiction  which  deals  with  The  New  Woman  and 
involves  the  sexual  relations.  The  motive  is  of  course  a 
serious  one,  even  a  large  one ;  yet  it  has  not  as  direct  a  sig 
nificance  as  his  other  books;  it  is  sociologic  rather  than 
psychologic.  Zenobia  is  one  of  those  strong,  stormy  char 
acters  not  easily  forgotten.  Hawthorne  has  hardly  drawn  a 
more  vivid  personality,  —  passionate,  impetuous,  richly  col 
ored  ;  with  all  the  differences  between  the  two,  she  reminds 
one  of  Louie  in  Mrs.  Ward's  "  David  Grieve,"  both  tragic 
sisters  of  fate  foredoomed  to  love  and  death. 

The  fourth  of  this  major  quartet  of  romances,  and  the  last 
great  book  of  Hawthorne's  life,  is  "  The  Marble  Faun,"  in 
some  ways  as  distinctive  and  striking  a  creation  as  he  ever 
gave  the  world.  Indeed,  but  for  the  foreign  setting  of  the 
tale,  it  is  as  characteristic  as  "  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  itself.  It 
loses  the  advantage  which  the  New  England  setting  always 
gave  Hawthorne ;  but  for  compensation,  it  gains  the  rich 
mellow  atmosphere  of  the  art  life  and  natural  beauty  to  be 
found  in  Italy.  It  is  a  story  of  artists'  life  in  that  land,  and 
an  innocent  and  most  attractive  element  of  Bohemianism  is 
in  its  pages.  From  Hawthorne's  "  Notebooks "  we  see 
again  and  again  that  much  not  only  in  England  but  on  the 
Continent  was  disappointing,  even  repulsive  to  this  thought 
ful  American ;  but  he  fairly  basked  in  the  sunshine  of  Italy, 
and  worshiped  before  her  shrines  of  imperishable  pictures 
and  sculptures.  In  this  delightful  atmosphere  of  autumn 
romance  Hawthorne  sets  a  little  group  of  Americans  and 


122  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

makes  them  play  out  their  tragic  fates.  Here  again  the 
tragic  note  is  insistent,  the  subject  a  spiritual  one,  the  teach 
ing  gravely  wholesome.  In  "The  Marble  Faun,"  the  author 
has  seized  upon  a  theme  as  profound  and  spiritually  signifi 
cant  as  any  he  ever  handled  :  that  it  is  only  by  a  knowledge 
of  sin,  and  perhaps  by  a  participation  in  it,  as  in  the  case  of 
Donatello,  that  the  soul  can  awake  and  grow ;  that  the  faun 
can  change  into  the  man.  The  romance  is  thus  a  subtle 
spiritual  allegory,  but  so  colored  and  warmed  by  humanity^  so 
dramatized  in  scenes  and  characters,  that  entirely  aside  from 
its  moral  significance  it  has  enthralling  power.  The  reader 
of  the  book  must  note  that  Hawthorne  essays  in  it  boldly 
and  with  distinguishing  success  a  most  difficult  and  danger 
ous  task ;  namely,  in  a  story  of  modern  life  full  of  reality 
in  its  descriptions  and  incidents  and  people  of  the  play,  he 
yet  introduces  a  mythic  element  in  Donatello,  thereby  run 
ning  the  risk  of  making  it  all  seem  ridiculous.  But  his  great 
art  triumphs,  and  the  whole  is  so  harmonious  that  the  reader 
might  easily  overlook  the  artistic  problem  the  novelist  has 
here  set  himself.  The  suggestion  of  the  non-human  elements 
in  Donatello's  personality  is  conveyed  so  subtly,  with  so 
much  of  grace  and  elegance,  of  sly  humor  and  indirection, 
that  the  reader's  imagination  is  aroused,  and  he  accepts  the 
character  for  very  truth. 

Externally  viewed,  the  romance  deals  with  the  relations 
of  two  pairs  of  lovers :  Miriam  and  her  faun  lover,  Dona 
tello,  the  sculptor  and  Hilda,  lovely  maiden  of  the  doves. 
But  regarded  more  closely,  Hilda  and  her  lover  are  sub 
sidiary,  for  relief  and  contrast,  and  the  central  drama  is 
played  by  Donatello  and  his  love,  culminating  in  the  murder 
he  commits,  which  is  the  psychologic  height  of  the  book  as 
well  as  the  climax  in  the  stage  sense.  Then  follows  Dona- 


Hawthorne  123 

tello's  awakening.  The  character  drawing  in  this  fascinating 
novel  is  clear,  firm,  and  vital.  Donatello  is  a  wonderful 
creation,  and  Hilda  one  of  the  loveliest  portraitures  of  sweet 
young  maidenhood,  sword-proof  in  her  white  innocence, 
ever  put  into  fiction ;  nor  are  the  other  characters  unworthy 
to  stand  with  these.  There  is  so  much  of  the  elusive  in  this 
romance,  it  deals  so  prevailingly  with  things  of  the  ideal  on 
the  borderland  of  mystery,  that  it  inevitably  puzzles  some 
who  wish  all  to  be  told,  all  understood,  forgetting  that  for  the 
soul,  hints,  suggestions,  are  often  more  than  mathematical 
statements.  When  Hawthorne  had  finished  the  story,  which 
appeared  in  England  under  the  title  "  Transformation,"  his 
publishers  requested  him  to  add  a  final  explanatory  chapter, 
which  he  did  with  an  ill  grace,  feeling,  rightly  enough,  that 
the  real  point  had  been  missed  by  those  who  needed  such 
an  edition. 

In  this  account  of  the  four  great  romances  of  Hawthorne, 
little  attempt  has  been  made  to  go  into  the  details  of  their 
plots ;  the  hope  was  to  suggest  their  meaning  to  the  reader, 
stimulating  to  a  first-hand  examination  which,  after  all,  is  the 
only  way  to  appreciate  such  works.  In  the  general  enumera 
tion  of  Hawthorne's  work,  too,  I  have  confined  myself  to  his 
greatest  productions  in  tale  and  romance.  He  wrote  much 
else,  the  "  Grandfather's  Chair  "  series,  many  essays,  sketches, 
biographical  studies;  but  all  this  constitutes  minor  work, 
however  interesting.  Besides  the  unfinished  "Septimius 
Felton "  already  mentioned,  another  romance,  "  Doctor 
Grimshawe's  Secret,"  was  published  in  1883,  edited  and 
finished  by  his  son  Julian.  It  has  all  the  grim  tragic 
quality  of  Hawthorne,  with  more  of  horror  and  less  of  satis 
faction  because  of  the  absence  of  the  clarifying  spiritual 
vision.  In  1897  what  was  announced  as  Hawthorne's 


124  Literary  Leaders  #f  America 

First  Diary  appeared,  but  his  son  Julian  doubts  if  it  be 
genuine. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne  was  a  great  romancer;  the  word 
has  often  been  used  in  this  sketch  in  speaking  of  his  fiction. 
His  own  idea  of  the  romance  can  be  found  in  the  Preface  to 
"The  House  of  Seven  Gables."  It  means  a  poetizing  of 
the  prosaic  facts  of  human  life,  presenting  them  in  their 
more  ideal  relations,  so  that  life  is  seen  as  symbol  more  than 
as  fact,  and  its  deeper  and  more  abiding  meaning  is  realized. 
Romance  with  Hawthorne  does  not  mean  to  falsify,  but 
rather,  in  a  setting  of  the  past  by  preference,  to  suggest  the 
spiritual  values  of  human  existence.  It  is  in  this  sense  that 
he  is  a  romanticist,  and  all  his  novels  have  this  character. 
Of  the  two  or  three  makers  of  literature  whose  position  is 
acknowledged  abroad  as  well  as  at  home,  Nathaniel  Haw 
thorne  is  one ;  no  man  has  done  more  unique  work  in 
American  letters,  and  his  fame  is  secure  as  the  great 
romancer  of  New  England  life. 

THE  SNOW  IMAGE: 

A  CHILDISH  MIRACLE 

One  afternoon  of  a  cold  winter's  day,  when  the  sun  shone 
forth  with  chilly  brightness,  after  a  long  storm,  two  children 
asked  leave  of  their  mother  to  run  out  and  play  in  the  new- 
fallen  snow.  The  elder  child  was  a  little  girl,  whom,  because 
she  was  of  a  tender  and  modest  disposition,  and  was  thought 
to  be  very  beautiful,  Lher  parents,  and  other  people  who  were 
familiar  with  her,  used  to  call  Violet.  But  her  brother  was 
known  by  the  style  and  title  of  Peony,  on  account  of  the  ruddi 
ness  of  his  broad  and  round  little  phiz,  which  made  everybody 
think  of  sunshine  and  great  scarlet  flowers.  The  father  of  these 
two  children,  a  certain  Mr.  Lindsey,  it  is  important  to  say,  was 


Hawthorne  125 

an  excellent  but  exceedingly  matter-of-fact  sort  of  man,  a  dealer 
in  hardware,  and  was  sturdily  accustomed  to  take  what  is  called 
the  common-sense  view  of  all  matters  that  came  under  his  con 
sideration.  With  a  heart  about  as  tender  as  other  people's,  he 
had  a  head  as  hard  and  impenetrable,  and  therefore,  perhaps,  as 
empty,  as  one  of  the  iron  pots  which  it  was  a  part  of  his  busi 
ness  to  sell.  The  mother's  character,  on  the  other  hand,  had  a 
strain  of  poetry  in  it,  a  trait  of  unworldly  beauty,  —  a  delicate 
and  dewy  flower,  as  it  were,  that  had  survived  out  of  her  imagi 
native  youth,  and  still  kept  itself  alive  amid  the  dusty  realities 
of  matrimony  and  motherhood. 

So,  Violet  and  Peony,  as  I  began  with  saying,  besought  their 
mother  to  let  them  run  out  and  play  in  the  new  snow ;  for, 
though  it  had  looked  so  dreary  and  dismal,  drifting  downward 
out  of  the  gray  sky,  it  had  a  very  cheerful  aspect,  now  that  the 
sun  was  shining  on  it.  The  children  dwelt  in  a  city,  and  had  no 
wider  play-place  than  a  little  garden  before  the  house,  divided 
by  a  white  fence  from  the  street.  *  *  * 

"Yes,  Violet, — yes,  my  little  Peony,"  said  their  kind  mother; 
"  you  may  go  out  and  play  in  the  new  snow." 

Accordingly  the  good  lady  bundled  up  her  darlings  in  woolen 
jackets  and  wadded  sacks,  and  put  comforters  round  their  necks, 
and  a  pair  of  striped  gaiters  on  each  little  pair  of  legs,  and 
worsted  mittens  on  their  hands,  and  gave  them  a  kiss  apiece,  by 
way  of  a  spell  to  keep  away  Jack  Frost.  Forth  sallied  the  two 
children,  with  a  hop-skip-and-jump,  that  carried  them  at  once 
into  the  very  heart  of  a  huge  snowdrift,  whence  Violet  emerged 
like  a  snow  bunting,  while  little  Peony  floundered  out  with  his  round 
face  in  full  bloom.  Then  what  a  merry  time  had  they  !  *  *  * 

At  last,  when  they  had  frosted  one  another  all  over  with  hand- 
fills  of  snow,  Violet,  after  laughing  heartily  at  little  Peony's 
figure,  was  struck  with  a  new  idea. 

"  You  look  exactly  like  a  snow  image.  Peony,"  said  she,  "  if 
your  cheeks  were  not  so  red.  And  that  puts  me  in  mind  !  Let 
us  make  an  image  out  of  snow,  —  an  image  of  a  little  girl,  —  and 
it  shall  be  our  sister,  and  shall  run  about  and  play  with  us  all 
winter  long.  Won't  it  be  nice? " 


126  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

"  Oh,  yes  ! "  cried  Peony,  as  plainly  as  he  could  speak,  for  he 
was  but  a  little  boy.  "  That  will  be  nice  !  And  mamma  shall 
see  it ! " 

"  Yes,"  answered  Violet ;  "  mamma  shall  see  the  new  little  girl. 
But  she  must  not  make  Ijer  come  into  the  warm  parlor ;  for,  you 
know,  our  little  snow  sister  will  not  love  the  warmth." 

And  forthwith  the  children  began  this  great  business  of  mak 
ing  a  snow  image  that  should  run  about ;  while  their  mother  who 
was  sitting  at  the  window  and  overheard  some  of  their  talk, 
could  not  help  smiling  at  the  gravity  with  which  they  set  about 
it.  They  really  seemed  to  imagine  that  there  would  be  no 
difficulty  whatever  in  creating  a  live  little  girl  out  of  the 
snow.  *  *  * 

Indeed,  it  was  an  exceedingly  pleasant  sight,  those  bright 
little  souls  at  their  task  !  Moreover,  it  was  really  wonderful  to 
observe  how  knowingly  and  skillfully  they  managed  the  matter. 
Violet  assumed  the  chief  direction,  and  told  Peony  what  to  do, 
while,  with  her  own  delicate  fingers,  she  shaped  out  all  the  nicer 
parts  of  the  snow  figure.  It  seemed,  in  fact,  not  so  much  to  be 
made  by  the  children,  as  to  grow  up  under  their  hands,  while 
they  were  playing  and  prattling  about  it.  *  *  * 

"  Peony,  Peony  ! "  cried  Violet ;  *  *  *  "  Bring  me  those  light 
wreaths  of  snow  that  have  rested  on  the  lower  branches  of  the 
pear  tree.  You  can  clamber  on  the  snowdrift,  Peony,  and  reach 
them  easily.  I  must  have  them  to  make  some  ringlets  for  our 
snow  sister's  head ! " 

"  Here  they  are,  Violet ! "  answered  the  little  boy.  « Take 
care  you  do  not  break  them.  Well  done  !  Well  done  !  How 
pretty ! " 

"Does  she  not  look  sweetly?"  said  Violet,  with  a  very  satis 
fied  tone ;  "  and  now  we  must  have  some  little  shining  bits  of 
ice,  to  make  the  brightness  of  her  eyes.  She  is  not  finished  yet. 
Mamma  will  see  how  very  beautiful  she  is;  but  papa  will  say, 
'  Tush  !  nonsense  !  —  come  in  out  of  the  cold  ! ' "  *  *  * 

u  What  a  nice  playmate  she  will  be  for  us,  all  winter  long  ! " 
said  Violet.  "  I  hope  papa  will  not  be  afraid  of  her  giving  us 
a  cold !  Shan't  you  love  her  dearly,  Peony  ?  " 


Hawthorne  127 

"  Oh,  yes  ! "  cried  Peony.  "  And  I  will  hug  her,  and  she  shall 
sit  down  close  by  me,  and  drink  some  of  my  warm  milk  ! " 

"Oh,  no,  Peony!"  answered  Violet,  with  grave  wisdom. 
"  That  will  not  do  at  all.  Warm  milk  will  not  be  wholesome  for 
our  little  snow  sister.  Little  snow  people,  like  her,  eat  nothing 
but  icicles.  No,  no,  Peony;  we  must  not  give  her  anything 
warm  to  drink  ! " 

There  was  a  minute  or  two  of  silence ;  for  Peony,  whose  short 
legs  were  never  weary,  had  gone  on  a  pilgrimage  again  to  the 
other  side  of  the  garden.  All  of  a  sudden,  Violet  cried  out, 
loudly  and  joyfully  :  — 

"  Look  here,  Peony  !  Come  quickly  !  A  light  has  been  shin 
ing  on  her  cheek  out  of  that  rose-colored  cloud !  and  the  color 
does  not  go  away  !  Is  not  that  beautiful  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  it  is  beau-ti-ful,"  answered  Peony,  pronouncing  the 
three  syllables  with  deliberate  accuracy.  "  Oh,  Violet,  only  look 
at  her  hah- !  It  is  all  like  gold ! " 

"Oh,  certainly,1'  said  Violet,  with  tranquillity,  as  if  it  were 
very  much  a  matter  of  course.  "  That  color,  you  know,  comes 
from  the  golden  clouds,  that  we  see  up  there  hi  the  sky.  She  is 
almost  finished  now.  But  her  lips  must  be  made  very  red,  — 
redder  than  her  cheeks.  Perhaps,  Peony,  it  will  make  them  red, 
if  we  both  kiss  them  ! " 

Accordingly  the  mother  heard  two  smart  little  smacks,  as  if 
both  her  children  were  kissing  the  snow  image  on  its  frozen 
mouth.  But,  as  this  did  not  seem  to  make  the  lips  quite  red 
enough,  Violet  next  proposed  that  the  snow  child  should  be 
invited  to  kiss  Peony's  scarlet  cheek. 

"  Come,  'ittle  snow  sister,  kiss  me  ! "  cried  Peony. 

"  There !  she  has  kissed  you,"  added  Violet,  "  and  now  her 
lips  are  very  red.  And  she  blushed  a  little,  too  !  " 

"  Oh,  what  a  cold  kiss  ! "  cried  Peony.  *  *  * 

"  Mamma  !  mamma  !  We  have  finished  our  little  snow  sister, 
and  she  is  running  about  the  garden  with  us  ! " 

"  What  imaginative  little  beings  my  children  are ! "  thought 
the  mother,  putting  the  last  few  stitches  into  Peony's  frock. 
"  And  it  is  strange,  too,  that  they  make  me  almost  as  much  a 


128  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

child  as  they  themselves  are!  I  can  hardly  help  believing,  now, 
that  the  snow  image  has  really  come  to  life  ! " 

"  Dear  mamma  ! "  cried  Violet,  "  pray  look  out,  and  see  what 
a  sweet  playmate  we  have  ! " 

The  mother,  being  thus  entreated,  could  no  longer  delay  to 
look  forth  from  the  window.  *  *  *  And  what  do  you  think  she 
saw  there  ?  Violet  and  Peony,  of  course,  her  own  two  darling 
children.  Ah,  but  whom  or  what  did  she,  besides?  Why,  if  you 
will  believe  me,  there  was  a  small  figure  of  a  girl,  dressed  all  in 
white,  with  rose-tinged  cheeks  and  ringlets  of  golden  hue,  play 
ing  about  the  garden  with  the  two  children  !  A  stranger  though 
she  was,  the  child  seemed  to  be  on  familiar  terms  with  Violet 
and  Peony,  and  they  with  her,  as  if  all  the  three  had  been  play 
mates  during  the  whole  of  their  little  lives.  The  mother 
thought  to  herself  that  it  must  certainly  be  the  daughter  of  one 
of  the  neighbors,  and  that,  seeing  Violet  and  Peony  in  the 
garden,  the  child  had  run  across  the  street  to  play  with  them. 
So  this  kind  lady  went  to  the  door,  intending  to  invite  the  little 
runaway  into  her  comfortable  parlor ;  for,  now  that  the  sunshine 
was  withdrawn,  the  atmosphere,  out  of  doors,  was  already  grow 
ing  very  cold. 

But,  after  opening  the  house  door,  she  stood  an  instant  on  the 
threshold,  hesitating  whether  she  ought  to  ask  the  child  to  come 
in,  or  whether  she  should  even  speak  to  her.  Indeed,  she  almost 
doubted  whether  it  were  a  real  child,  after  all,  or  only  a  light 
wreath  of  the  new-fallen  snow,  blown  hither  and  thither  about 
the  garden  by  the  intensely  cold  west  wind.  There  was  cer 
tainly  something  very  singular  in  the  aspect  of  the  little  stranger. 
Among  all  the  children  of  the  neighborhood,  the  lady  could  re 
member  no  such  face,  with  its  pure  white,  and  delicate  rose  color, 
and  the  golden  ringlets  tossing  about  the  forehead  and  cheeks. 
And  as  for  her  dress,  which  was  entirely  of  white,  and  fluttering 
in  the  breeze,  it  was  such  as  no  reasonable  woman  would  put 
upon  a  little  girl,  when  sending  her  out  to  play,  in  the  depth  of 
winter.  It  made  this  kind  and  careful  mother  shiver  only  to 
look  at  those  small  feet,  with  nothing  in  the  world  on  them, 
except  a  very  thin  pair  of  white  slippers.  Nevertheless,  airily  as 


Hawthorne  129 

she  was  clad,  the  child  seemed  to  feel  not  the  slightest  inconven 
ience  from  the  cold,  but  danced  so  lightly  over  the  snow  that  the 
tips  of  her  toes  left  hardly  a  print  in  its  surface ;  while  Violet 
could  but  just  keep  pace  with  her,  and  Peony's  short  legs  com 
pelled  him  to  lag  behind. 

Once,  in  the  course  of  their  play,  the  strange  child  placed 
herself  between  Violet  and  Peony,  and  taking  a  hand  of  each, 
skipped  merrily  forward,  and  they  along  with  her.  Almost 
immediately,  however,  Peony  pulled  away  his  little  fist,  and 
began  to  rub  it  as  if  the  ringers  were  tingling  with  cold ;  while 
Violet  also  released  herself,  though  with  less  abruptness,  gravely 
remarking  it  was  better  not  to  take  hold  of  hands.  The  white- 
robed  damsel  said  not  a  word,  but  danced  about,  just  as  merrily 
as  before.  If  Violet  and  Peony  did  not  choose  to  play  with  her, 
she  could  make  just  as  good  a  playmate  of  the  brisk  and  cold 
west  wind,  which  kept  blowing  her  all  about  the  garden,  and 
took  such  liberties  with  her,  that  they  seemed  to  have  been 
friends  for  a  long  time.  All  this  while,  the  mother  stood  on  the 
threshold,  wondering  how  a  little  girl  could  look  so  much  like  a 
flying  snowdrift,  or  how  a  snowdrift  could  look  so  very  like 
a  little  girl. 

She  called  Violet,  and  whispered  to  her. 

"Violet,  my  darling,  what  is  this  child's  name?"  asked  she. 
"  Does  she  live  near  us  ?  " 

"  Why,  dearest  mamma,"  answered  Violet,  laughing  to  think 
that  her  mother  did  not  comprehend  so  very  plain  an  affair, 
"  this  is  our  little  snow  sister,  whom  we  have  just  been  making! " 

"  Yes,  dear  mamma,"  cried  Peony,  running  to  his  mother,  and 
looking  up  simply  into  her  face.  "  This  is  our  snow  image ! 
Is  it  not  a  nice  Mttle  child?  "  *  *  * 

While  mamma  still  hesitated  what  to  think  and  what  to  do, 
the  street  gate  was  thrown  open,  and  the  father  of  Violet  and 
Peony  appeared,  wrapped  in  a  pilot-cloth  sack,  with  a  fur  cap 
drawn  down  over  his  ears,  and  the  thickest  of  gloves  upon  his 
hands.  Mr.  Lindsey  was  a  middle-aged  man  with  a  weary  and 
yet  a  happy  look  in  his  wind-flushed  and  frost-pinched  face,  as  if 
he  had  been  busy  all  the  day  long,  and  was  glad  to  get  back  to 
x 


130  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

his  quiet  home.  His  eyes  brightened  at  the  sight  of  his  wife  and 
children,  although  he  could  not  help  uttering  a  word  or  two  of 
surprise,  at  finding  the  whole  family  in  the  open  air,  on  so  bleak 
a  day,  and  after  sunset  too.  He  soon  perceived  the  little  white 
stranger,  sporting  to  and  fro  in  the  garden,  like  a  dancing  snow 
wreath,  and  the  flock  of  snowbirds  fluttering  above  her  head. 

"  Pray,  what  little  girl  may  that  be  ? "  inquired  this  very  sensi 
ble  man.  "  Surely  her  mother  must  be  crazy,  to  let  her  go  out 
in  such  bitter  weather  as  it  has  been  to-day,  with  only  that  flimsy 
white  gown,  and  those  thin  slippers ! " 

"  My  dear  husband,"  said  his  wife,  "  I  know  no  more  about  the 
little  thing  than  you  do.  Some  neighbor's  child,  I  suppose.  Our 
Violet  and  Peony,"  she  added,  laughing  at  herself  for  repeating 
so  absurd  a  story,  "  insist  that  she  is  nothing  but  a  snow  image, 
which  they  have  been  busy  about  in  the  garden,  almost  all  the 
afternoon." 

As  she  said  this,  the  mother  glanced  her  eyes  toward  the  spot 
where  the  children's  snow  image  had  been  made.  What  was 
her  surprise,  on  perceiving  that  there  was  not  the  slightest  trace 
of  so  much  labor!  —  no  image  at  all! — no  piled-up  heap  of 
snow !  —  nothing  whatever,  save  the  prints  of  little  footsteps 
around  a  vacant  space ! 

"  This  is  very  strange !  "  said  she. 

"  What  is  strange,  dear  mother?  "  asked  Violet.  "  Dear  father, 
do  not  you  see  how  it  is?  This  is  our  snow  image,  which  Peony 
and  I  have  made,  because  we  wanted  another  playmate.  Did 
not  we,  Peony  ?  " 

"  Yes,  papa, "  said  crimson  Peony.  "  This  be  our  'ittle  snow 
sister.  Is  she  not  beau-ti-ful?  But  she  gave  me  such  a  cold 
kiss!" 

"  Poh,  nonsense,  children!"  cried  their  good,  honest  father, 
who,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  had  an  exceedingly  common- 
sensible  way  of  looking  at  matters.  "Do  not  tell  me  of  making 
live  figures  out  of  snow.  Come,  wife ;  this  little  stranger  must 
not  stay  out  in  the  bleak  air  a  moment  longer.  We  will  bring 
her  into  the  parlor ;  and  you  shall  give  her  a  supper  of  warm 
bread  and  milk,  and  make  her  as  comfortable  as  you  can.  Mean- 


Hawthorne  131 

while,  I  will  inquire  among  the  neighbors ;  or,  if  necessary, 
send  the  city  crier  about  the  streets,  to  give  notice  of  a  lost 
child."  *  *  * 

"  Husband  !  dear  husband  ! "  said  his  wife,  in-  a  low  voice,  — 
for  she  had  been  looking  narrowly  at  the  snow  child,  and  was 
more  perplexed  than  ever,  —  "  there  is  something  very  singular  in 
all  this.  You  will  think  me  foolish,  —  but  —  but  —  may  it  not  be 
that  some  invisible  angel  has  been  attracted  by  the  simplicity  and 
good  faith  with  which  our  children  set  about  their  undertaking? 
May  he  not  have  spent  an  hour  of  his  immortality  in  playing  with 
those  dear  little  souls?  and  so  the  result  is  what  we  call  a  miracle. 
No,  no !  Do  not  laugh  at  me ;  I  see  what  a  foolish  thought  it 
is!" 

"My  dear  wife,"  replied  the  husband,  laughing  heartily,  "you 
are  as  much  a  child  as  Violet  and  Peony." 

And  in  one  sense  so  she  was,  for  all  through  life  she  had  kept 
her  heart  full  of  childlike  simplicity  and  faith,  which  was  as  pure 
and  clear  as  crystal ;  and,  looking  at  all  matters  through  this 
transparent  medium,  she  sometimes  saw  truths  so  profound,  that 
other  people  laughed  at  them  as  nonsense  and  absurdity. 

But  now  kind  Mr.  Lindsey  had  entered  the  garden,  breaking 
away  from  his  two  children,  who  still  sent  their  shrill  voices  after 
him,  beseeching  him  to  let  the  snow  child  stay  and  enjoy  herself 
in  the  cold  west  wind.  As  he  approached,  the  snowbirds  took 
to  flight.  The  little  white  damsel,  also,  fled  backward,  shaking 
her  head,  as  if  to  say,  "  Pray,  do  not  touch  me  !  "  and  roguishly, 
as  it  appeared,  leading  him  through  the  deepest  of  the  snow. 
Once,  the  good  man  stumbled,  and  floundered  down  upon  his 
face,  so  that,  gathering  himself  up  again,  with  the  snow  sticking 
to  his  rough  pilot-cloth  sack,  he  looked  as  white  and  wintry  as  a 
snow  image  of  the  largest  size.  Some  of  the  neighbors,  mean 
while,  seeing  them  from  their  windows,  wondered  what  could 
possess  poor  Mr.  Lindsey  to  be  running  about  his  garden  in 
pursuit  of  a  snowdrift,  which  the  west  wind  was  driving  hither 
and  thither  !  At  length,  after  a  vast  deal  of  trouble,  he  chased 
the  little  stranger  into  a  corner,  where  she  could  not  possibly 
escape  him.  His  wife  had  been  looking  on,  and,  it  being  nearly 


132  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

twilight,  was  wonderstruck  to  observe  how  the  snow  child 
gleamed  and  sparkled,  and  how  she  seemed  to  shed  a  glow  all 
round  about  her ;  and  when  driven  into  the  corner,  she  positively 
glistened  like  a  star  !  It  was  a  frosty  kind  of  brightness,  too, 
like  that  of  an  icicle  in  the  moonlight.  The  wife  thought  it  strange 
that  good  Mr.  Lindsey  should  see  nothing  remarkable  in  the 
snow  child's  appearance. 

"  Come,  you  odd  little  thing  ! "  cried  the  honest  man,  seizing 
her  by  the  hand,  "  I  have  caught  you  at  last,  and  will  make  you 
comfortable  in  spite  of  yourself.  We  will  put  a  nice  warm  pair 
of  worsted  stockings  on  your  frozen  little  feet,  and  you  shall  have 
a  good  thick  shawl  to  wrap  yourself  in.  Your  poor  white  nose,  I 
am  afraid,  is  actually  frost-bitten.  But  we  will  make  it  all  right. 
Come  along  in." 

And  so,  with  a  most  benevolent  smile  on  his  sagacious  visage, 
all  purple  as  it  was  with  the  cold,  this  very  well-meaning  gentle 
man  took  the  snow  child  by  the  hand  and  led  her  toward  the 
house.  She  followed  him,  droopingly  and  reluctant ;  for  all  the 
glow  and  sparkle  was  gone  out  of  her  figure ;  and  whereas  just 
before  she  had  resembled  a  bright,  frosty,  star-gemmed  evening, 
with  a  crimson  gleam  on  the  cold  horizon,  she  now  looked  as  dull 
and  languid  as  a  thaw.  *  *  * 

A  puff  of  the  west  wind  blew  against  the  snow  child,  and  again 
she  sparkled  like  a  star. 

"  Snow ! "  repeated  good  Mr.  Lindsey,  drawing  the  reluctant 
guest  over  his  hospitable  threshold.  "  No  wonder  she  looks  like 
snow.  She  is  half  frozen,  poor  little  thing  !  But  a  good  fire  will 
put  everything  to  rights." 

Without  further  talk,  and  always  with  the  same  best  intentions, 
this  highly  benevolent  and  common-sensible  individual  led  the 
little  white  damsel  —  drooping,  drooping,  drooping,  more  and 
more  —  out  of  the  frosty  air,  and  into  his  comfortable  parlor. 
A  Heidenberg  stove,  filled  to  the  brim  with  intensely  burning 
anthracite,  was  sending  a  bright  gleam  through  the  isinglass  of  its 
iron  door,  and  causing  the  vase  of  water  on  its  top  to  fume  and 
bubble  with  excitement.  A  warm,  sultry  smell  was  diffused 
throughout  the  room.  A  thermometer  on  the  wall  furthest  from 


Hawthorne  133 

the  stove  stood  at  eighty  degrees.  The  parlor  was  hung  with 
red  curtains,  and  covered  with  a  red  carpet,  and  looked  just  as 
warm  as  it  felt.  The  difference  betwixt  the  atmosphere  here  and 
the  cold,  wintry  twilight  out  of  doors  was  like  stepping  at  once 
from  Nova  Zembla  to  the  hottest  part  of  India,  or  from  the 
North  Pole  into  an  oven.  Oh,  this  was  a  fine  place  for  the  little 
white  stranger! 

The  common-sensible  man  placed  the  snow  child  on  the 
hearth  rug,  right  in  front  of  the  hissing  and  fuming  stove. 

"  Now  she  will  be  comfortable ! "  cried  Mr.  Lindsey,  rubbing 
his  hands  and  looking  about  him,  with  the  pleasantest  smile  you 
ever  saw.  "  Make  yourself  at  home,  my  child." 

Sad,  sad  and  drooping,  looked  the  little  white  maiden,  as  she 
stood  on  the  hearth  rug,  with  the  hot  blast  of  the  stove  striking 
through  her  like  a  pestilence.  Once,  she  threw  a  glance  wist 
fully  toward  the  window,  and  caught  a  glimpse,  through  its  red 
curtains,  of  the  snow-covered  roofs,  and  the  stars  glimmering 
frostily,  and  all  the  delicious  intensity  of  the  cold  night.  The 
bleak  wind  rattled  the  window  panes,  as  if  it  were  summoning 
her  to  come  forth.  But  there  stood  the  snow  child,  drooping, 
before  the  hot  stove ! 

But  the  common-sensible  man  saw  nothing  amiss. 

"  Come,  wife,"  said  he,  "  let  her  have  a  pair  of  thick  stockings 
and  a  woolen  shawl  or  a  blanket  directly ;  and  tell  Dora  to  give 
her  some  warm  supper  as  soon  as  the  milk  boils.  You.  Violet 
and  Peony,  amuse  your  little  friend.  She  is  out  of  spirits,  you 
see,  at  finding  herself  in  a  strange  place.  For  my  part,  I  will  go 
around  among  the  neighbors,  and  find  out  where  she  belongs." 

The  mother,  meanwhile,  had  gone  in  search  of  the  shawl  and 
stockings ;  for  her  own  view  of  the  matter,  however  subtle  and 
delicate,  had  given  way,  as  it  always  did,  to  the  stubborn  mate 
rialism  of  her  husband.  Without  heeding  the  remonstrances  of 
his  two  children,  who  still  kept  murmuring  that  their  little  snow 
sister  did  not  love  the  warmth,  good  Mr.  Lindsey  took  his  de 
parture,  shutting  the  parlor  door  carefully  behind  him.  Turning 
up  the  collar  of  his  sack  over  his  ears,  he  emerged  from  the 
house,  and  had  barely  reached  the  street  gate,  when  he  was 


Literary  Leaders  of  America 

recalled  by  the  screams  of  Violet  and  Peony,  and  the  rapping  of 
a  thimbled  finger  against  the  parlor  window. 

"Husband!  husband!"  cried  his  wife,  showing  her  horror- 
stricken  face  through  the  window  panes.  "  There  is  no  need  of 
going  for  the  child's  parents! " 

"  We  told  you  so,  father ! "  screamed  Violet  and  Peony,  as  he 
reentered  the  parlor.  "  You  would  bring  her  in ;  and  now  our 
poor  —  dear  —  beau-ti-ful  little  snow  sister  is  thawed! " 

And  their  own  sweet  little  faces  were  already  dissolved  in  tears ; 
so  that  their  father,  seeing  what  strange  things  occasionally  happen 
in  this  everyday  world,  felt  not  a  little  anxious  lest  his  children 
might  be  going  to  thaw  too !  In  the  utmost  perplexity,  he  de 
manded  an  explanation  of  his  wife.  She  could  only  reply  that, 
being  summoned  to  the  parlor  by  the  cries  of  Violet  and  Peony, 
she  found  no  trace  of  the  little  white  maiden,  unless  it  were  the 
remains  of  a  heap  of  snow,  which,  while  she  was  gazing  at  it, 
melted  quite  away  upon  the  hearth  rug. 

"  And  there  you  see  all  there  is  left  of  it !  "  added  she,  pointing 
to  a  pool  of  water,  in  front  of  the  stove.  *  *  * 

This,  you  will  observe,  was  one  of  those  rare  cases  which 
yet  will  occasionally  happen,  where  common  sense  finds  itself  at 
fault.  The  remarkable  story  of  the  snow  image,  though  to  that 
sagacious  class  of  people  to  whom  good  Mr.  Lindsey  belongs  it 
may  seem  but  a  childish  affair,  is,  nevertheless,  capable  of  being 
moralized  in  various  methods,  greatly  for  their  edification.  One 
of  its  lessons,  for  instance,  might  be  that  it  behooves  men,  and 
especially  men  of  benevolence,  to  consider  well  what  they  are 
about,  and,  before  acting  on  their  philanthropic  purposes,  to  be 
quite  sure  that  they  comprehend  the  nature  and  all  the  relations 
of  the  business  in  hand.  *  *  * 

But,  after  all,  there  is  no  teaching  anything  to  wise  men  of 
good  Mr.  Lindsey's  stamp.  They  know  everything  —  oh,  to  be 
sure! — everything  that  has  been,  and  everything  that  is,  and 
everything  that,  by  any  future  possibility,  can  be.  And,  should 
some  phenomenon  of  nature  or  providence  transcend  their  sys 
tem,  they  will  not  recognize  it,  even  if  it  come  to  pass  under 
their  very  noses. 


CHAPTER  VI 

EMERSON 

IN  the  center  of  the  remarkable  little  group  of  New  Eng 
land  writers  who  stood  for  God  and  country,  who  were 
idealists,  yet  thoroughly  of  the  soil,  into  whose  words  the 
very  genius  of  their  land  seems  to  have  passed,  the  literary 
historian  must  always  place  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  As 
unique  as  Poe  or  Hawthorne,  he  seems  more  American  than 
either;  there  is  in  his  work  something  so  high  and  so 
homely,  that  the  man  behind  the  work  comes  to  be  regarded 
with  a  touching  affection,  his  character  making  him  beloved 
even  as  his  genius  has  made  him  honored. 

Merely  to  mention  Emerson's  name  is  to  bring  up  a 
vision  of  New  England,  to  think  of  Massachusetts,  of  Boston, 
of  Harvard,  of  Concord.  When  the  Athens  of  America  is 
spoken  of  nowadays,  there  is  in  the  phrase  a  suggestion  of 
newspaper  raillery  ;  but  when  Emerson  was  in  his  heyday  of 
influence  and  activity,  the  little  city  had  reason  to  be  proud 
of  its  intellectual  giants,  of  the  standing  near  and  far  of  its 
literary  leaders.  Then,  American  literature  looked  to 
Boston  and  its  vicinity  as  naturally  as  Englishmen  look  to 
London. 

In  this  favored  city  Emerson  was  born  May  25,  1803. 
While  these  words  are  being  written,  various  preparations 
are  making  to  celebrate  the  anniversary  of  his  birth  j  the 


136  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

memory  of  him  is  green,  his  labor  is  vitally  affecting  a  later 
century,  his  soul  goes  marching  on. 

The  Puritan  strain  in  him  went  deep.  Back  in  the  early 
sixteenth  century,  one  Peter  Bulkeley,  Fellow  of  St.  John's 
College  at  Cambridge,  England,  found  the  persecutions  of 
Archbishop  Laud  intolerable  and  fled  the  country,  coming 
to  the  United  States  and  settling  in  Concord.  He  was 
Emerson's  first  ancestor  upon  this  soil.  Those  deriving 
from  him  were  prevailingly  clerical  and  scholastic,  Puritan 
too  in  the  good  sense,  though  comparatively  recent  investi 
gation  shows  that  there  was  an  admixture  of  Episcopalianism 
and  a  more  genial  manner  of  taking  the  world  in  the  maternal 
branch  of  the  family.  America  gave  no  man  better  fore 
fathers  ;  John  Burroughs  thinks  that  there  is  a  certain  lack 
of  red  blood  in  Emerson  because  of  his  clerical  stock ;  but 
we  prefer  here  to  dwell  upon  the  advantage  of  such  a  past. 

As  to  his  immediate  family,  his  grandfather  William  was 
a  pastor  at  Concord  in  the  eighteenth  century,  building  the 
Old  Manse,  which  was  later  to  take  on  a  magic  meaning  from 
its  association  with  the  Emerson  family  and  Hawthorne.  His 
father,  a  second  William,  was  pastor  of  the  first  church  in 
Boston ;  both  of  them  men  of  scholarship  and  literary 
accomplishment.  The  father  died  when  Waldo  was  eight, 
so  that  the  boy's  character,  so  far  as  home  influence  went, 
was  more  largely  molded  by  his  mother  and  his  aunt. 
Emerson's  mother  was  one  of  those  typically  strong,  sweet, 
serene  New  England  women  whose  son  exhibits  a  poise  and 
dignity,  a  sort  of  Olympian  calm  which  is  a  direct  inheritance  : 
a  benignity  of  a  higher  place  even  than  Parnassus.  Her 
maiden  name  was  Ruth  Haskins  ;  she  was  of  a  distinguished 
Boston  family,  and  a  person  of  deep  and  genuine  piety. 
When  an  unmarried  girl  she  registered  in  her  diary  a  vow 


Emerson  137 

to  keep  a  record  of  the  happy  and  sad  events  of  her 
experience,  that  she  might  see  the  hand  of  God  working 
therein,  and  so  come  to  a  better  understanding  of  His  ways. 
There  is  in  this  the  true  flavor  of  the  old-time  noble  Puritan 
strain.  It  was  by  her  economy  and  self-sacrifice,  when  the 
father's  death  had  left  her  and  her  six  sons  but  poorly  off, 
that  all  the  children  received  sound  educations  —  an  example 
of  the  great  unwritten  epic  of  motherhood.  Emerson  was  a 
scholar  at  the  Boston  Latin  School,  still  a  noted  local  institu 
tion,  leaving  it  to  enter  Harvard  in  1817,  when  he  was  four 
teen  years  of  age,  which  says  much  as  to  the  gradual  lifting 
of  the  requirements  for  college  entrance  during  the  past 
century.  Emerson  was  no  infant  phenomenon,  nor  even 
precocious  in  his  school  and  college  life ;  he  was  just  a 
middling  good  scholar,  standing  neither  high  nor  low,  but 
possessing  marked  tastes  for  good  reading,  and  recognized 
by  his  mates  as  a  bookish,  thoughtful  fellow,  interesting  in 
a  quiet  way.  He  was  weak  in  mathematics  (which  seems 
to  be  generally  the  bete  noire  of  those  called  to  literature), 
but  showed  ability  in  forensics  and  composition.  A  fellow- 
student  describes  him  as  "  a  spiritual-looking  boy  in  blue 
nankeen,"  and  declares  that  he  loved  him  and  thought  him 
"  so  angelic  and  remarkable."  Without  being  a  prig  or  a 
muff,  Emerson  seems  from  his  earliest  boyhood  to  have 
had  something  in  him  which  made  his  fellows  regard  him 
as  of  exceptional  quality.  After  graduation  in  1821,  the 
young  man,  or  rather  boy  of  eighteen,  taught  school  in  the 
neighborhood  for  four  years,  during  which  he  found  out  that 
the  profession  of  pedagogue  offered  him  few  attractions.  It 
was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that  one  of  his 
family  should  turn  from  school- mastering  to  theology.  He 
entered  the  Unitarian  Divinity  School  at  Harvard  in  1825, 


ij 8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

\ 
and  although  not  a  regularly  enrolled  scholar,  he  studied 

there  for  three  years,  and  was  licensed  to  preach  in  1826. 
It  was  equally  natural  that  he  should  be  ordained  as  a 
Unitarian  since,  as  Dr.  Holmes  puts  it  in  his  "Life  of 
Emerson,"  it  was  "the  dominating  form  of  belief  in  the 
more  highly  educated  classes  of  both  the  two  great  New 
England  centers,  the  town  of  Boston  and  the  University  of 
Cambridge."  James  Freeman  Clarke  and  William  E.  Chan- 
ning,  names  to  conjure  with,  were  then  preaching  in  the  city. 
At  the  time  he  was  ordained,  Emerson's  health  was  poor ; 
he  went  South  to  South  Carolina  and  Florida  for  recupera 
tion,  and  during  this  tour  preached  in  several  Southern 
towns,  as  he  did  on  his  return  in  various  New  England 
places,  including  Northampton,  Concord,  and  Boston ;  the 
fledgling  trying  his  wings. 

He  must  have  given  satisfaction,  for  in  1829,  the  year  after 
his  studies  were  finished,  he  received  an  invitation  to  become 
the  colleague  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Ware,  the  much  esteemed 
pastor  of  the  Second  Unitarian  Church  in  Boston,  called  the 
Old  North  Church.  In  this  same  year  too  he  married  Ellen 
Louisa  Tucker.  Life  opened  brightly  for  the  young  minis 
ter.  But  clouds  were  already  above  the  horizon ;  his  wife, 
who  was  of  delicate  habit,  sickened  and  died  of  consump 
tion  early  in  1832,  and  by  the  fall  of  the  same  year  we  find 
Emerson  preaching  a  sermon  in  which  he  states  his  objec 
tions  of  conscience  to  administering  the  Lord's  Supper, — 
a  declaration  followed  by  his  resignation,  since  the  church 
committee's  views  were  diametrically  opposite.  This  ser 
mon  of  Emerson's  was  a  preliminary  shot  in  a  battle  which 
has  ever  since  been  waged,  and  by  firing  it  Emerson  first 
stood  forth  as  the  great  Independent  of  thought  he  was 
all  his  days  to  be.  The  act  of  standing  boldly  by  his  con- 


Emerson  139 

victions  was  a  brave  one ;  it  meant  trouble,  financial  risk, 
possibility  of  a  loss  of  social  standing.  Emerson  never 
hesitated.  Such  examples  of  courage  are  rare.  He  parted 
from  the  congregation  with  no  bitterness,  with  friendliness  on 
both  sides ;  and  was  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  a  new- 
life  work.  As  a  preacher  the  impression  made  by  Emerson 
had  been  unique ;  never  an  orator,  there  was  nevertheless 
rare  charm  about  his  manner  of  speaking  or  in  what  he  said. 
He  was  awkward,  slow  and  hesitating  in  delivery,  and  often 
lost  his  place  by  shuffling  his  manuscript,  yet  the  sweet 
dignity  of  his  presence  and  the  high  things  he  had  to  com 
municate  held  his  audiences  as  in  a  vise.  One  Scotchman 
hearing  him  in  Edinburgh,  declared  that  Emerson  had  for 
him  more  attraction  than  the  great  Dr.  Chalmers. 

When  his  wife  died,  Emerson's  health  was  precarious, 
and  since  no  definite  work  was  in  sight,  he  went  abroad  in 
the  winter  of  1833-1834,  going  to  Sicily  and  thence  to  the 
Continent  and  England.  By  the  settlement  of  his  wife's 
share  in  the  Tucker  estate,  Emerson  found  himself  pos 
sessed  of  a  twelve- hundred  dollar  income,  quite  sufficient 
in  those  days,  and  with  his  simple  manner  of  life  in  a  place 
like  Concord,  to  make  him  comfortable,  especially  as  this 
sum  was  soon  increased  by  his  literary  and  lecture  work. 
The  diary  of  his  travels  shows  he  got  more  out  of  meeting 
distinguished  folk,  especially  literary  men  like  Landor, 
Coleridge,  Wordsworth^  De  Quincey,  and  Carlyle,  than  from 
contact  with  pictures,  statues,  and  cathedrals.  He  states  in  a 
letter  that  his  main  reason  for  the  trip  was  to  see  three  or 
four  writers.  Indeed,  the  world  of  historic  lore  and  tradi 
tion  Emerson  was  by  nature  less  sympathetic  to  than  are 
most  tourists.  Emerson's  meeting  with  Carlyle  was  the 
beginning  of  the  famous  friendship  with  which,  as  embodied 


140  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

in  the  exchange  of  letters,  the  world  is  now  familiar.  His 
first  impression  of  the  Chelsea  Sage  was  most  favorable. 
Frank  liking  was  begotten  on  both  sides,  and  the  bond  thus 
struck  lasted  for  life. 

Upon  returning  to  his  native  shores  in  1833  Emerson 
took  up  lecturing,  a  vocation  he  followed  for  the  next 
fifteen  years ;  he  spoke  on  his  foreign  travels,  or  of  great 
men  like  Angelo,  Milton,  and  Burke,  or  on  popular  themes 
of  instruction,  such  as  "  The  Relation  of  Man  to  the  Globe." 
The  year  after  his  return,  Emerson  settled  in  Concord, 
first  living  with  his  kinsman,  Dr.  Ripley,  in  the  Old  Manse, 
and  the  next  year  settling  in  the  "plain,  square,  wooden 
house,"  set  about  with  horse-chestnuts  and  evergreens,  and 
for  many  years  now  a  place  pointed  out  as  one  of  the  chief 
jewels  in  the  crown  of  this  wonderful  little  town.  There  he 
lived  and  died,  and  there  his  daughter  Ellen  still  resides.  It  is 
to  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  primarily,  that  Concord  owes  its 
international  reputation.  But  if  its  Revolutionary  record  were 
not  a  noble  one,  if,  of  old,  it  had  not  been  the  place  where 

Once  the  embattled  farmers  stood 

And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world, 

or  the  group  of  literary  men  and  women  who  distinguish 
it  had  never  gathered  there,  its  natural  beauty  would  have 
made  its  name  pleasant.  It  might  indeed,  as  Dr.  Holmes 
suggests,  "  sit  for  its  portrait  as  an  ideal  New  England 
town."  Only  twenty  miles  from  Boston,  it  is  within  easy 
reach  of  all  that  city  affords,  while  retaining  the  charm  of 
a  rural  place,  but  its  main  glory  lies  in  the  fact  that  certain 
great  people  lived  there. 

There  are  many  reports  of  Emerson's  lecture  experiences, 
some  of  them  amusing.  One  hears  of  his  absent-minded- 


Emerson  141 

ness,  the  ease  with  which  he  lost  his  place  in  the  manuscript 
from  which  he  was  reading,  and  the  dignity  he  exhibited 
as  he  adjusted  the  sheets  while  his  audience  waited  in 
patience,  perhaps  in  wonder.  But  a  like  impression  was 
made  by  Emerson,  whether  as  preacher  or  teacher ;  indeed 
his  lectures  were  always  lay  sermons.  Their  unconven- 
tionality,  poetic  beauty,  and  profound  earnestness,  were  all 
elements  of  his  success.  Above  all,  was  the  superb  eleva 
tion  of  the  speaker,  who  dealt  at  first  hand,  simply  and  sin 
cerely  and  with  a  certain  lovable  physical  awkwardness,  with 
great  personalities,  great  ideas,  great  issues.  A  lecture  thus 
pitched  and  aimed  took  on  the  nature  of  an  intellectual 
and  moral  experience  to  a  sensitive  soul  in  the  seats.  It 
was  the  message  of  a  man  who  in  his  own  description  was 
"  enamored  of  moral  perfection  " ;  it  was,  in  a  word,  in 
spiring.  Few  men  in  private  or  public  begot  love  as  did 
Emerson.  When  he  began  his  platform  work,  the  old-time 
lyceum  was  in  full  sway ;  it  meant  the  popular  presentation 
of  serious  subjects  which  allowed  rural  communities,  people 
detached  from  the  centers,  to  come  into  contact  with  the 
best  minds  of  the  day.  Emerson  was  for  years  the  marked 
figure  in  these  lyceum  lectures,  which  have  now,  in  a  day 
when  one  hundred  lectures  are  given  to  one  aforetime,  been 
exchanged  for  club  addresses,  University  Extension  talks, 
Chautauqua  courses,  and  twenty  more  methods  of  popu 
lar  education.  His  lectures  were  made  books  of  in  due 
time,  adding  a  little  thus  to  his  income,  but  not  much. 
Lecture  prices  in  those  days  were  much  below  what  men 
of  distinction  receive  to-day ;  in  country  lyceums  Emerson's 
fee  was  but  ten  dollars  with  his  traveling  expenses;  in 
Boston  he  received  fifty  dollars,  but  he  often  went  to  near 
by  places,  like  Worcester,  for  such  a  sum  as  twenty  dollars. 


142  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

A  year  after  he  purchased  his  Concord  house  Emerson 
made  his  second  marriage,  Miss  Lidian  Jackson  becoming 
his  wife;  she  was  a  lady  possessed  of  property.  The 
quiet,  studious,  and  in  the  high  sense  influential  life  led  by 
Emerson  for  many  years  offers  few  striking  points  for  the 
chronicler.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  Carlyle  he  draws  a 
picture  of  the  retired,  simple,  domestic  life  he  led  :  — 

I  occupy,  or  improve,  as  we  Yankees  say,  two  acres  only  of 
God's  earth;  on  which  is  my  house,  my  kitchen  garden,  my 
orchard  of  thirty  young  trees,  my  empty  barn.  My  house  is  now 
a  very  good  one  for  comfort,  and  abounding  in  room.  Besides  my 
house  I  have,  I  believe,  $22,000,  whose  income  in  ordinary  years  is 
six  per  cent.  I  have  no  other  tithe  or  glebe  except  the  income  of 
my  winter  lectures,  which  was  last  winter  $800.  Well,  with  this 
income,  here  at  home  I  am  a  rich  man.  I  stay  at  home,  and  go 
abroad,  at  my  own  instance.  I  have  food,  warmth,  leisure,  books, 
friends.  Go  away  from  home,  I  am  rich  no  longer.  I  never  have 
a  dollar  to  spend  on  a  fancy.  As  no  wise  man,  I  suppose,  ever 
was  rich  in  the  sense  of  freedom  to  spend,  because  of  the  inunda 
tions  of  claims,  so  neither  am  I,  who  am  not  wise.  But  at  home 
I  am  rich,  —  rich  enough  for  ten  brothers. 

The  most  noteworthy  outward  happenings  during  the  re 
mainder  of  his  long  and  fruitful  career  were  the  European 
tripsof  i847-i848and  1872-1873,  the  latter  extensive  enough 
to  take  in  Egypt;  and  a  California  trip  in  1871  at  a  time 
when  it  was  far  more  of  an  undertaking  than  in  these  days  of 
overland  limited  expresses  and  Pullman  comforts. 

Worldly  honors  came  to  him  of  all  men  least  caring 
for  them,  when  in  1866  Harvard  conferred  her  coveted 
LL.D.,  and  elected  him  a  college  overseer.  From  1841, 
when  the  first  series  of  his  Essays  appeared,  he  published 
steadily;  the  second  series  following  in  1844,  the  "  Poems  " 
in  1847,  and  such  other  typical  works,  as  "Representative 


Emerson  143 

Men  "  in  1850,  "  English  Traits  "  in  1856,  the  "  Conduct  of 
Life"  in  1860,  another  volume  of  poems,  "May  Day  and 
Other  Pieces,"  1867,  "  Society  and  Solitude,"  1870,  "  Let 
ters  and  Social  Aims"  in  1876,  and  the  posthumously  pub 
lished  "Natural  History  of  the  Intellect"  in  1893.  This 
last  book  was  made  up  of  lectures  and  reprints  from 
the  Dial,  the  famous  transcendental  periodical  of  which 
Margaret  Fuller  was  the  editor. 

In  1872  his  house  was  burned,  and  the  shock  and  excite 
ment  weakened  his  condition,  which  already  showed  a  gen- 
i  eral  breaking  up  of  the  vital  forces,  and  in  particular,  a  sad 
loss  of  memory.  The  final  tour  abroad  was  undertaken 
after  the  loss  of  his  house,  and  on  his  return  next  year,  he 
was  welcomed  by  his  loving  townspeople  with  music  and 
with  flowers,  and  enabled  to  enter  a  home  rebuilt  and  im 
proved  by  friendly  benefactions  —  to  pass  nearly  ten  years  of 
at  least  painless  decay.  In  the  late  sixties  this  physical 
decline  had  begun,  and  nothing  in  the  history  of  letters  is 
more  pathetic  than  the  picture  of  this  great  man  attending 
Longfellow's  funeral  and  remarking  to  a  friend,  "That  gen 
tleman  was  a  sweet,  beautiful  soul,  but  I  have  entirely  for 
gotten  his  name."  When  he  fell  on  sleep  in  1882,  and  was 
laid  to  rest  in  the  Sleepy  Hollow  cemetery,  where  Hawthorne 
and  Thoreau  also  rest,  he  had  almost  completed  his  seventy- 
ninth  year,  and  for  more  than  a  decade  his  superb  mental 
quality  had  been  a  thing  of  the  past ;  gradually  he  had  lapsed 
into  a  state  that  was  well-nigh  that  of  childishness. 

Looking  at  his  life  as  a  whole,  it  had  been  one  of  singular 
felicity  and  honor.  The  loss  of  his  son  Waldo  was  the 
sharpest  grief  of  his  life  ;  but  no  lover  of  poetry  who  reads 
the  lofty  and  touching  "  Threnody "  in  which  that  son's 
memory  is  embalmed,  will  feel  that  the  experience  was  in 


144  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

vain,  since  it  was  thus  translated  into  high  song.  It  would 
be  a  mistake,  then,  to  bear  down  too  heavily  upon  the 
pathetic  close  of  Emerson's  life.  When  he  returned  to 
Europe  in  1847,  ne  was  recognized  as  the  peer  of  the  great 
men  of  his  day.  At  Concord  his  house  was  for  many  years 
a  center  for  the  most  enlightened  culture,  naturally  visited 
by  distinguished  folk  from  different  parts  of  the  land  or  from 
abroad.  The  Dial  coterie  was  there  to  be  found ;  Haw 
thorne  and  Alcott  were  near-by  neighbors ;  Thoreau,  that 
shy  genius  of  the  woods,  dropped  in  at  any  moment.  Few 
men  have  ever  been  loved  by  all  conditions  of  men  and  wo 
men  as  was  Emerson.  Not  alone  his  compeers,  his  fellows 
of  thought  and  deed,  but  the  common  folk  who  were  far 
from  understanding  his  message,  worshiped  the  sweet,  grave 
face  of  him,  the  kindly  friend  and  neighbor,  the  man  whose 
very  look  was  a  benison  as  he  passed  by.  To  this  day,  the 
memory  of  Emerson  in  Concord  is  like  the  sound  of  bells, 
in  tune  and  sweet.  Where  the  stately  Hawthorne  was  re 
vered  and  feared  as  he  walked  aloof,  Emerson  was  beloved. 
He  would  lean  over  the  fence  or  against  the  woodpile,  talking 
of  the  most  homely  affairs  with  some  farmer,  or  over  a  piece  of 
morning  mince  pie,  settle  the  affairs  of  the  universe.  High 
thinking  and  plain  living  met  in  him  as  in  few  of  the  sons  of 
Adam.  The  odd  combination  in  him  of  Yankee  practicality, 
of  shrewdness  tempered  by  kindly  humor,  along  with  the 
loftiest  spirituality  and  the  wisdom  of  Brahma,  brought  him 
seemingly  into  equal  touch  with  heaven  and  earth.  There 
is  nothing  like  his  character  and  accomplishment  in  the  full 
range  of  American  literature. 

When  in  1836,  a  short  while  after  he  had  settled  in  Con 
cord,  a  little  volume   called  "  Nature  "  appeared  in  print, 
\s  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  made  his  manifesto  to  the  world.    In 


Emerson  145 

it  Emerson  spoke  practically  a  new  dialect ;  it  took  more 
than  a  decade  to  sell  a  few  hundred  copies  —  yet  this  book 
is  essentially  a  revelation  of  the  man  ;  his  fundamental  con 
ception  of  the  unique  interest  and  importance  of  the  human 
soul  set  in  the  midst  of  what  we  call  nature  and  the  world  of 
men,  with  its  one  business  to  develop  character  and  attain  to 
perfection,  is  here  set  forth.  And  in  all  his  subsequent  writ 
ings,  whatever  the  subject,  his  message  is  the  same,  the 
theme  but  a  variation  thereupon.  The  distinctive  quality  of 
Emerson  as  a  writer  comes  from  two  things  in  the  main : 
the  single-eyed,  clear  purpose  of  his  teaching  and  the  incom 
municable  charm  of  his  way  of  saying  his  say.  He  wished 
to  awaken  his  readers  to  the  truth  that  life  is  much  more 
symbol  than  fact ;  that  the  spiritual  significance  in  a  piece  of 
coal  is  of  vastly  more  importance  than  its  power  of  combus 
tion.  In  the  whole  outer  universe  he  found  this  spiritual 
meaning ;  and  then  bade  every  honest  soul,  with  no  atten 
tion  to  convention  or  platitude  of  tradition,  to  bring  his  own 
nature  into  accord  with  this  one  great  principle  which  guides 
and  guards  the  worlds. 

Because  of  his  genius  for  getting  at  the  central  fact  of 
spirit,  impatiently  brushing  aside  what  is  secondary  or  merely 
ornamental,  he  inevitably  became  an  Independent  in  reli 
gious  thought,  a  radical,  as  the  orthodox  would  say.  But  he 
was,  in  the  deepest  and  profoundest  sense,  an  awakening 
and  a  purifying  force,  especially  upon  the  thoughtful  young, 
and  those  sensitive  to  spiritual  appeal.  Emerson  in  his 
magnificently  high  and  wholesome  address  to  the  young 
person  to  be  true  to  his  best  and  find  God  in  all  things  and 
"  good  in  everything,"  preaches  a  pantheistic  doctrine  which 
has  been  a  banner-cry  and  "a  tonic  draught  to  countless 
spirits.  For  his  own  generation  he  was  a  mighty  influence  : 
L 


146  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

and  his  place  in  American  literature  has  strengthened  as  this 
influence  has  been  the  more  realized.  If  his  message  falls 
dull  on  the  ears  of  young  Americans  of  the  present  dispensa 
tion,  with  less  of  flutelike  loveliness  and  of  gravely  serene 
power,  the  reflection  is  upon  the  age,  not  upon  Emerson, 
for  he  was  never  more  needed  in  his  beautiful  idealism  than 
he  is  at  present. 

The  next  year  after  the  book  "  Nature  "  he  delivered  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Harvard,  printed  with  the  title 
"  The  American  Scholar."  This  is  the  address  described 
by  Lowell  as  "  our  intellectual  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence."  Read  to-day,  it  calls  like  a  clarion  to  the  native 
youth  to  believe  in  country,  in  its  aims  and  potentialities, 
and  to  believe  in  himself  as  a  possible  helper  of  country. 
It  is  also  a  noble  defense  of  the  life  intellectual  and  its  sore 
need  in  such  a  land  as  ours. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  think  of  Emerson  as  if  his  essays 
were  entirely  devoted  to  a  study  of  the  oversoul,  soaring  in 
the  superior  regions  of  abstract  philosophy.  Plenty  of  his 
themes  are  homely,  direct,  practical :  upon  love,  con 
versation,  manners,  conduct,  experience.  The  reader,  too, 
should  beware  of  the  shallow  criticism  that,  after  reading 
one  such  essay,  it  is  hard  to  say  just  what  it  is  about,  to 
draw  a  diagram  of  its  course.  Emerson's  writings  are  not 
primarily  intellectual,  ratiocinative ;  he  speaks  from  and  to 
the  spirit.  His  value  is  in  the  way  of  stimulation,  sugges 
tion  ;  after  reading  a  typical  essay  of  his  the  whole  nature 
is  clarified  and  attuned  to  a  higher  plain  of  living.  This 
most  precious  influence  comes  only  from  the  few  great 
idealists  and  poets  of  the  literary  world ;  and  the  good  that 
is  derived  from  them  is  one  that,  just  because  it  is  so  pre 
cious,  cannot  be  expressed  in  terms  of  intellectual  gain,  or 


Emerson  147 

used  satisfactorily  in  a  college  test.  I  would  rather  have  a 
young  person  during  the  formative  period  really  responsive 
to  Emerson,  really  in  love  with  him,  than  letter-perfect  in  a 
dozen  isms  and  ologies. 

If  Emerson  deals  with  an  apparently  concrete  subject  —    „ 
as  with  some  great  personality  in  his  "  Representative  Men  "  ^0,  >i 
—  or  with  national  qualities  and  customs,  as  in  his  study  ^O 

of  the  life  of  our  British  cousins  in  "  English  Traits  "  — he 
views  life  in  such  wise  as  continually  to  bring  the  reader 
back  to  this  position  of  his  :  belief  in  character  as  the  sole 
test,  in  the  spiritual  significance  of  life,  as  the  only  real 
thing.  Thus  the  whole  body  of  hi?  writings  have  a  unity 
such  as  rarely  happens.  The  essays  are  often  referred  to 
for  their  alleged  lack  of  unity,  and  humorous  stories  fly  about 
to  the  effect  that  Emerson  walked  in  the  woods,  writing 
detached  Orphic  sentences,  which  on  returning  home  he 
then  shuffled  together  without  order  or  sequence,  and, 
presto  !  a  lecture,  later  to  become  an  essay.  Nothing  is 
more  foolish  and  misleading.  There  is  the  subtlest  and 
strongest  of  connections  in  every  essay  and,  as  we  said,  in 
all  his  work :  the  wholeness  of  a  consistent  view,  of  an  in 
sistent  purpose,  of  a  unique  preoccupation  with  the  things  of 
God.  The  greatness  of  Emerson  does  not  lie  in  his  being  a 
philosopher,  in  the  sense  of  one  who  constructs  a  definite 
system :  for  that  he  was  not.  He  cared  nothing  for  mere 
formal  consistency,  which  is,  he  tells  us,  "  the  bugbear  of 
small  minds."  His  business  was  to  drop  seed  thoughts  of 
life  into  the  soul  of  his  time,  and  as  he  sowed,  to  make  the 
labor  seem  like  a  song,  because  of  the  beauty  of  his  ges 
tures  —  the  words  of  a  poet. 

This  leads  on  to  the  important  matter  of  Emerson's  style. 
He  is  fundamentally  a  great  man  of  letters  as  well  as  a  spirit- 


148  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

ual  force,  for  the  good  and  sufficient  reason  that  he  had  a 
genius  for  the  happy  word,  —  for  a  certain  fashion  of  form, 
a  winsome  and  lovely  manner  of  expressing  his  thought  such 
as  the  world  always  recognizes  to  mean  a  gift  for  literature. 
Matthew  Arnold,  in  writing  of  Emerson,  emphasizes  his  spirit 
ual  quality  rather  than  his  literary  gift.  But  it  is  doubtful 
if  Emerson  would  have  so  influenced  Arnold  in  the  latter's 
youth,  if  there  had  not  been  in  him  something  of  the  magic 
of  a  literary  master.  Always,  when  Emerson  is  at  his  best, 
it  is  fascinating  to  hear  him  talk.  Listen  to  him,  for  ex 
ample,  as  he  begins  to  speak  of  love  in  the  essay  of  that 
name :  — 

The  natural  association  of  the  sentiment  of  love  with  the  hey 
day  of  the  blood  seems  to  require,  that  in  order  to  portray  it  in 
vivid  tints,  which  every  youth  and  maid  should  confess  to  be  true 
to  their  throbbing  experience,  one  must  not  be  too  old.  The 
delicious  fancies  of  youth  reject  the  least  savor  of  a  mature  phi 
losophy,  as  chilling  with  age  and  pedantry  their  purple  bloom. 
And,  therefore,  I  know  I  incur  the  imputation  of  unnecessary 
hardness  and  stoicism  from  those  who  compose  the  Court  and 
Parliament  of  Love.  But  from  these  formidable  censors  I  shall 
appeal  to  my  seniors.  For  it  is  to  be  considered  that  this  pas 
sion  of  which  we  speak,  though  it  begin  with  the  young,  yet  for 
sakes  not  the  old,  or  rather  suffers  no  one  who  is  truly  its  servant 
to  grow  old,  but  makes  the  aged  participators  of  it,  not  less  than 
the  tender  maiden,  though,  in  a  different  and  nobler  sort. 

When  one  has  read  only  thus  far,  one  is  fully  prepared 
for  rich  delights  to  come.  I  have  had  young  men  and 
women  in  a  college  class  after  this  essay  or  the  one  upon 
Nature  had  been  read  aloud  to  them,  come  to  me  with 
flushed  cheeks  and  humid  eyes,  to  testify  to  their  delight 
in  it,  the  wonder  of  the  awakened  lyric  thrill  in  their  quick 
young  hearts.  Emerson  was  not  only  the  general  friend  and 


Emerson  149 

aider  of  those  who  live  in  the  spirit ;  he  exhorted  like  an 
angel.  "  Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star,"  he  cried  to  youth, 
and  straightway  youth  is  so  enchanted  by  the  figure  that  it 
falls  in  love  with  the  idea.  His  manner  of  writing  unites 
in  a  remarkable  way  the  greatest  dignity  and  elevation  with 
the  homeliest,  I  might  almost  say,  the  quaintest  of  idiomatic 
quality.  His  rural  life,  the  simplicity  always  to  be  found 
in  his  habits  and  surroundings,  entered  into  his  metaphors 
and  the  very  music  of  his  marshaled  words.  What  of  aus 
tere  and  select  there  was  in  him  as  an  inheritance  of  eight 
generations  of  clerical  ancestors,  was  thus  freshened  by  the 
fine  flavor  of  the  soil  in  his  style.  The  directness  and  hon 
esty  of  the  man's  nature,  too,  are  reflected  in  his  writings, 
and  become  a  head-mark  of  it.  No  maker  of  literature 
ever  illustrated  better  BufTon's  dictum  that  "  the  style's  the 
man  "  than  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  The  distinction  of  his 
prose  is  a  distinction  which  was  felt  in  his  conversation,  in 
his  very  presence  :  it  is  a  distinction  of  character. 

It  cannot  be  too  plainly  understood  that  Emerson's  so- 
called  obscurity  is  never  an  obscurity  in  his  way  of  saying 
things ;  no  man  ever  handled  English  with  more  lucidity. 
His  sentences  are  short  and  never  forced  or  twisted  in 
construction ;  his  words  are  rarely  such  as  the  wayfaring 
man  may  not  understand,  and  only  then  when  the  theme 
demands  them.  No,  if  Emerson  is  difficult  to  read, 
the  difficulty  inheres  in  the  nature  of  the  things  he 
talks  of  or  in  the  unpreparedness  of  the  listener.  Deal 
ing  as  he  prevailingly  does  with  spiritual  verities,  it  was 
inevitable  that  at  times  he  should  soar  to  such  a  height  as 
to  embarrass  the  pedestrian  who  would  follow  him.  A  trip 
in  a  balloon  is  in  some  respects  less  easy  and  comfortable 
than  a  faring  through  one  of  earth's  thoroughfares ;  yet  there 


1 50  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

may  be  certain  advantages  in  the  way  of  air  and  landscape 
in  the  aerial  car.  It  may  also  be  added  that  Emerson  in 
putting  his  lectures  into  essay  form  (and  all  his  essays  were 
originally  lectures)  cared  less  than  do  most  writers  to  indi 
cate  the  seams  or  interstices  of  his  pattern ;  but  neverthe 
less  my  firm  belief  has  been  already  expressed  that  these 
essays  are  always  a  close-knit  organism.  It  would  be  an 
excellent  exercise  for  the  reader  interested  in  this  matter 
to  try  to  indicate  the  skeleton  of  Emerson's  thought,  its 
ordered  progress,  in  a  typical  paper  like  that  on  "  Compen 
sation  "  or  "  Politics." 

To  Emerson  there  was  great  beauty  in  human  character 
and  in  the  ordered  cosmos  of  which  man  is  a  part.  His 
admiration  of  personality  and  his  belief  that  it  was  the  key 
to  all  progress  made  him  an  Individualist,  and  this  he  re 
mained  consistently  to  the  end,  during  the  period  when 
man's  associative  activity  was  fast  developing  both  as  a 
practical  fact  and  a  social  ideal.  For  that  very  reason  there 
was  need  of  such  a  thinker  as  Emerson,  lest  society  in  love 
with  the  new  toy  called  "  association  "  should  forget  that,  in 
a  sense,  the  truest  strength  lies  in  independent  action. 
Emerson's  crying-up  of  the  importance  of  independence,  of 
individualism,  was  a  form  of  romanticism;  it  meant  that 
freer  expression  of  personality  which,  in  all  lands,  has  been 
a  chief  characteristic  of  the  literary  tendency  called  the  ro 
mantic.  And  Emerson's  habit  of  placing  man  in  the  midst 
of  a  world  which  is  made  for  his  benefit  and  of  which  he  is 
the  interpreter  and  explainer,  is  saved  from  all  narrowness 
and  crudity  by  the  large  nobility  of  his  general  view,  which 
has  in  it  a  touch  of  Oriental  mysticism,  of  Buddhistic  em 
brace  of  the  All. 

Emerson  was  also  a  great  Independent,  as  we  have  seen, 


Emerson  151 

not  only  in  politics  and  religion,  but  in  the  far  deeper  sense 
of  one  who  preached  self-reliance  (read  his  bracing  essay  of 
this  title)  whereby  a  man  was  not  dependent  upon  position 
or  money  or  the  external  pleasures  of  the  world,  but,  finding 
resources  within  himself,  and  in  harmony  with  the  universal, 
moved  along  his  elected  path  undisturbed,  fearless,  and 
calmly  content.  In  one  of  his  essays  he  pictures  a  bustling, 
nervous,  fevered  modern  man  suddenly  rebuked  by  Nature 
herself,  surrounding  him  with  peace  and  beauty :  "  Why  so 
hot,  little  sir?"  speaks  the  voice.  This  is  typical  of  Emer 
son's  attitude ;  it  is  one  of  the  explanations  of  his  whole 
some  magic  upon  the  unspoiled,  susceptible  heart. 

In  his  prose  Emerson  was  thus  a  noble  teacher,  and  he 
will  continue  to  be,  so  long  as  the  people  have  ears  to  hear. 
His  message  is  not  temporary ;  one  is  aware  of  the  accent 
of  the  eternal  in  its  cadences.  And  he  was,  moreover,  a 
master  of  English  prose,  great  for  the  way  he  said  a  thing  as 
well  as  for  what  he  said. 

But  Emerson  has  a  double  claim  upon  our  regard  as  a 
writer;  he  is  not  only  essayist  but  poet.  To  some,  for 
quality  and  high  message,  he  is  unsurpassed  upon  the 
American  Parnassus.  This  opinion,  however,  needs  qualifi 
cation.  Emerson's  natural  medium  of  expression  was  prose. 
He  had  mastered  the  art  of  prose  utterance.  He  never 
entirely  mastered  that  of  metrical  writing.  He  wrote  ex 
quisite  lines,  phrases,  occasionally  even  whole  poems ;  but 
he  could  not  be  sure  of  himself,  he  might  at  any  time  halt  in 
meter,  or  become  harsh  and  unhappy  in  language,  or  choke 
poetic  expression  by  the  colder  usages  of  philosophy.  His 
technique,  in  other  words,  was  not  certain,  and  there  seems 
to  have  been  a  natural  defect  in  his  feeling  for  metrical 
movement;  either  this,  or  lack  of  the  work  which  brings 


152  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

certitude.  In  thought,  in  feeling,  often  in  the  noble  mar 
riage  of  thought  and  expression,  and  certainly  in  the  quality 
of  his  poetic  utterance,  Emerson  was  one  of  the  major 
poets  of  America ;  but  too  often  only  in  flashes.  Hence, 
on  the  whole,  the  necessity  of  placing  his  verse  below  his 
prose  works,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  greatest 
verse  may  with  perfect  propriety  be  pointed  to  as  the  finest 
emanation  of  his  genius. 

Emerson  himself  was  aware  of  this  defect  in  him  for  verse 
expression.  He  once  said  to  Mr.  J.  T.  Trowbridge :  "  I 
feel  it  a  hardship  that  —  with  something  of  a  lover's  passion 
for  what  is  to  me  the  most  precious  thing  in  life  —  poetry  — 
I  have  no  gift  of  fluency  in  it,  only  a  rude  and  stammering 
utterance."  The  beautiful  humility  of  this  will  strike  every 
body  who  listens  to  it ;  it  has  a  deep  pathos.  But  it  con 
tains  sound  self-criticism,  and  be  it  noted  that  Emerson 
always  and  everywhere  in  his  life  and  literature  reveals  him 
self  as  a  good  critic  of  himself  and  others.  He  was  not 
deluded  about  matters  of  importance,  a  strain  of  splendid 
common  sense  ran  through  all  his  idealism. 

His  first  book  of  poems  was  not  published  until  he  was 
forty-four  years  of  age.  In  this  lateness  of  appearance  there 
is  food  for  reflection.  The  poet  who  all  his  life  must  sing, 
and  who,  in  the  twenties,  often  does  his  most  lasting  and 
lovely  work — think  of  Byron  and  Keats  and  Shelley  — 
would  not  have  thus  waited  until  middle  age ;  it  suggests  that 
with  Emerson  verse  was  not  the  main  outlet  of  expression. 
It  was  not  until  twenty  years  later,  in  1867,  that  his  second 
volume  appeared ;  and  here  again  there  is  the  hint  of  the 
occasional,  the  aside  —  of  something  loved,  by  his  own  con 
fession,  yet  not  chosen  steadily  to  convey  his  message  to  the 
world,  as,  for  instance,  Browning  ch/»se  it  and  continued  to 


Emerson  1 53 

use  the  verse  medium  for  a  lifetime,  let  the  world  say  what 
it  would. 

But  the  wild  charm,  the  impressive  high  distinction  of 
Emerson  at  his  best  in  verse,  no  true  lover  of  poetry  can 
gainsay.  Lines  and  passages  of  his  have  entered  widely 
into  quotation  and  almost  daily  use :  — 

The  frolic  architecture  of  the  snow. 

And  yet,  for  all  his  faith  could  see, 
I  would  not  the  good  bishop  be. 

Thou  shalt  not  wave  thy  staff  in  air, 

Or  dip  thy  paddle  in  the  lake, 
But  it  carves  the  bow  of  beauty  there, 

And  the  ripples  in  rhymes  the  oar  forsake. 

Daughters  of  Time,  the  hypocritic  Days. 

Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world. 

One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost. 

Oh,  tenderly  the  haughty  day 
Fills  her  blue  urn  with  fire  ! 

These  and  fifty  more  fragments  rise  in  the  mind  of  the 
Emerson  lover  as  among  the  precious  and  permanent  things 
of  the  native  anthology.  For  the  very  reason  of  his  careless 
technique,  an  appreciation  of  Emerson's  quality  is  a  test  of 
one's  real  recognition  of  the  immense  merit  of  his  song. 
You  must  know  it  in  spite  of  its  failings ;  as  if  one  were  to 
pierce  through  Cinderella's  homespun  garb  to  the  young 
beauty  beneath.  His  native  endowment  for  poetic  expres 
sion  was  very  great ;  had  he  been  willing  or  able  to  take  the 
Ars  Poetica  more  seriously,  realizing  that  technique  is  a 


154  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

good  servant  though  a  bad  master,  there  are  no  poetic 
heights  he  might  not  have  attained. 

But  there  are  a  few  pieces  in  which,  while  the  form  is 
adequate,  the  message  is  purely  Emersonian.  The  "  Con 
cord  Hymn  "  is  one  such,  perhaps  the  most  familiar  of  all 
his  song :  — 

HYMN 

SUNG  AT  THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  CONCORD  MONUMENT 

April  19,  1836 

By  the  rude  bridge  that  arched  the  flood, 

Their  flag  to  April's  breeze  unfurled, 
Here  once  the  embattled  farmers  stood, 

And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world. 

The  foe  long  since  in  silence  slept ; 

Alike  the  conqueror  silent  sleeps  ; 
And  Time  the  ruined  bridge  has  swept 

Down  the  dark  stream  which  seaward  creeps. 

On  this  green  bank,  by  this  soft  stream, 

We  set  to-day  a  votive  stone ; 
That  memory  may  their  deed  redeem, 

When,  like  our  sires,  our  sons  are  gone. 

Spirit  that  made  those  heroes  dare 

To  die,  and  leave  their  children  free, 
Bid  Time  and  Nature  gently  spare 

The  shaft  we  raise  to  them  and  thee. 

Deeply  expressive  of  Emerson's  religious  creed  is  "  The 
Problem,"  in  which  his  recognition  of  God  in  everything 
is  breathed  forth  along  with  a  kind  of  noble  impatience  of 
the  shackles  of  dogma,  and  the  exclusiveness  of  sects.  This 
poem  is  starred  with  fine  and  often-quoted  couplets,  and 


Emerson  155 

is  one  of  the  best  known  he  ever  wrote.  It  is  unequal  in 
execution,  and  the  final  lines  are  by  no  means  commensurate 
with  what  goes  before ;  but  as  a  whole  it  has  great  dignity 
and  distinction  of  manner. 

THE  PROBLEM 

I  like  a  church ;  I  like  a  cowl ; 

I  love  a  prophet  of  the  soul ; 

And  on  my  heart  monastic  aisles 

Fall  like  sweet  strains,  or  pensive  smiles ; 

Yet  not  for  all  his  faith  can  see 

Would  I  that  cowled  churchman  be. 

Why  should  the  vest  on  him  allure, 
Which  I  could  not  on  me  endure? 

Not  from  a  vain  or  shallow  thought 
His  awful  Jove  young  Phidias  brought, 
Never  from  lips  of  cunning  fell 
The  thrilling  Delphic  oracle ; 
Out  from  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old; 
The  litanies  of  nations  came, 
Like  the  volcano's  tongue  of  flame, 
Up  from  the  burning  core  below,  — 
The  canticles  of  love  and  woe ; 
The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome, 
And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome, 
Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity ; 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free ; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew ;  — 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew. 

Know'st  thou  what  wove  yon  wood  bird's  nest 
Of  leaves,  and  feathers  from  her  breast? 
Or  how  the  fish  outbuilt  her  shell, 
Painting  with  morn  each  annual  cell  ? 


156  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Or  how  the  sacred  pine  tree  adds 
To  her  old  leaves  new  myriads? 
Such  and  so  grew  these  holy  piles, 
Whilst  love  and  terror  laid  the  tiles. 
Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon, 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone ; 
And  Morning  opes  with  haste  her  lids, 
To  gaze  upon  the  Pyramids  ; 
O'er  England's  abbeys  bends  the  sky, 
As  on  its  friends,  with  kindred  eye ; 
For  out  of  Thought's  interior  sphere, 
These  wonders  rose  to  upper  air ; 
And  Nature  gladly  gave  them  place, 
Adopted  them  into  her  race, 
And  granted  them  an  equal  date 
With  Andes  and  with  Ararat. 

These  temples  grew  as  grows  the  grass ; 

Art  might  obey,  but  not  surpass. 

The  passive  Master  lent  his  hand 

To  the  vast  soul  that  o'er  him  planned ; 

And  the  same  power  that  reared  the  shrine, 

Bestrode  the  tribes  that  knelt  within. 

Ever  the  fiery  Pentecost 

Girds  with  one  flame  the  countless  host, 

Trances  the  heart  through  chanting  choirs, 

And  through  the  priest  the  mind  inspires. 

The  word  unto  the  prophet  spoken 
Was  writ  on  tables  yet  unbroken ; 
The  word  by  seers  or  sibyls  told, 
In  groves  of  oak,  or  fanes  of  gold, 
Still  floats  upon  the  morning  wind, 
Still  whispers  of  the  willing  mind. 
One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost. 
I  know  what  say  the  fathers  wise,  — - 
The  Book  itself  before  me  lies, 


Emerson  157 

Old  Chrysostom,  best  Augustine, 
And  he  who  blent  both  in  his  line, 
The  younger  Golden  Lips  or  mines, 
Taylor,  the  Shakespeare  of  divines. 
His  words  are  music  in  my  ear, 
I  see  his  cowled  portrait  dear ; 
And  yet,  for  all  his  faith  could  see, 
I  would  not  the  good  bishop  be. 

Emerson's  love  for  country  life  is  finely  voiced  in  the 
poem  "  Good-by ! "  One  can  imagine  the  mood  with 
which  he  would  return  to  Concord  to  walk  its  green  se 
cluded  groves,  a  peripatetic  poet-philosopher. 

GOOD-BY  ! 

Good-by,  proud  world  !     I'm  going  home : 
Thou  art  not  my  friend,  and  I'm  not  thine, 
Long  through  thy  weary  crowds  I  roam ; 
A  river  ark  on  the  ocean  brine, 
Long  I've  been  tossed  like  the  driven  foam : 
But  now,  proud  world  !     I'm  going  home. 

Good-by  to  Flattery's  fawning  face ; 

To  Grandeur  with  his  wise  grimace ; 

To  upstart  Wealth's  averted  eye  ; 

To  supple  Office,  low  and  high  ; 

To  crowded  halls,  to  court  and  street ; 

To  frozen  hearts  and  hasting  feet ; 

To  those  who  go,  and  those  who  come ; 

Good-by,  proud  world  !     I'm  going  home. 

I  am  going  to  my  own  hearthstone, 
Bosomed  in  yon  green  hills  alone,  — 
A  secret  nook  in  a  pleasant  land, 
Whose  groves  the  frolic  fairies  planned ; 
Where  arches  green,  the  livelong  day, 
Echo  the  blackbird's  roundelay, 


158  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

And  vulgar  feet  have  never  trod 

A  spot  that  is  sacred  to  thought  and  God. 

O,  when  I  am  safe  in  my  sylvan  home, 
I  tread  on  the  pride  of  Greece  and  Rome ; 
And  when  I  am  stretched  beneath  the  pines, 
Where  the  evening  star  so  holy  shines, 
I  laugh  at  the  lore  and  the  pride  of  man, 
At  the  sophist  schools,  and  the  learned  clan ; 
For  what  are  they  all,  in  their  high  conceit, 
When  man  in  the  bush  with  God  may  meet  ? 

Again  and  again,  in  his  verse,  either  incidental  to  the 
main  theme,  or  as  a  subject  for  itself,  Emerson  painted  the 
beauty  of  natural  things —  flowers,  bees,  birds  and  trees  — 
and  surcharged  them  with  the  spiritual  significance  he  found 
everywhere.  This  side  of  his  poetic  genius  is  as  attractive 
as  any  aspect  of  his  verse,  and  several  poems  may  be  given 
to  illustrate  it.  "  The  Rhodora  "  is  full  of  a  quaint,  touch 
ing  simplicity  and  a  kind  of  childlike  trust :  — 

THE  RHODORA: 

ON  BEING  ASKED,  WHENCE  IS  THE  FLOWER? 

In  May,  when  sea  winds  pierced  our  solitudes, 

I  found  the  fresh  Rhodora  in  the  woods, 

Spreading  its  leafless  blooms  in  a  damp  nook, 

To  please  the  desert  and  the  sluggish  brook. 

The  purple  petals,  fallen  in  the  pool, 

Made  the  black  water  with  their  beauty  gay ; 

Here  might  the  redbird  come  his  plumes  to  cool, 

And  court  the  flower  that  cheapens  his  array. 

Rhodora!  if  the  sages  ask  thee  why 

This  charm  is  wasted  on  the  earth  and  sky, 

Tell  them,  dear,  that  if  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 

Then  Beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being : 


Emerson  159 

Why  them  wert  there,  O  rival  of  the  rose  ! 

I  never  thought  to  ask,  I  never  knew ; 

But,  in  my  simple  ignorance,  suppose 

The  self-same  Power  that  brought  me  there  brought  you. 

The  longer  "  Humblebee,"  if  of  lighter  tone  and  intent, 
and  lacking  the  ethical  application  common  to  our  poet, 
is  full  of  charm,  and  of  nature  lore,  and  with  its  touch  of 
pathos  at  the  end  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  perfect  things 
Emerson  ever  did,  and  may  be  read  in  this  connection. 

Nor  can  the  splendid  winter  picture,  "  The  Snowstorm," 
be  omitted,  a  poem  almost  as  well  known  as  Whittier's 
"  Snow-Bound,"  and  as  successful  in  securing  an  atmos 
phere  which  has  made  that  masterpiece  and  Burns's  "  The 
Cotter's  Saturday  Night  "  of  universal  popularity  :  — 

THE   SNOWSTORM 

Announced  by  all  the  trumpets  of  the  sky, 
Arrives  the  snow,  and  driving  o'er  the  fields, 
Seems  nowhere  to  alight :  the  whited  air 
Hides  hills  and  woods,  the  river,  and  the  heavens, 
And  veils  the  farmhouse  at  the  garden's  end. 
The  sled  and  traveler  stopped,  the  courier's  feet 
Delayed,  all  friends  shut  out,  the  housemates  sit 
Around  the  radiant  fireplace,  inclosed 
In  a  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm. 

Come  see  the  north  wind's  masonry. 
Out  of  an  unseen  quarry  evermore 
Furnished  with  tile,  the  fierce  artificer 
Curves  his  white  bastions  with  projected  roof 
Round  every  windward  stake,  or  tree,  or  door 
Speeding,  the  myriad-handed,  his  wild  work 
So  fanciful,  so  savage,  nought  cares  he 
For  number  or  proportion.     Mockingly, 
On  coop  or  kennel  he  hangs  Parian  wreaths ; 


160  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

A  swanlike  form  invests  the  hidden  thorn ; 
Fills  up  the  farmer's  lane  from  wall  to  wall, 
Maugre  the  farmer's  sighs  ;  and,  at  the  gate, 
A  tapering  turret  overtops  the  work. 
And  when  his  hours  are  numbered,  and  the  world 
Is  all  his  own,  retiring,  as  he  were  not, 
Leaves,  when  the  sun  appears,  astonished  Art 
To  mimic  in  slow  structures,  stone  by  stone, 
Built  in  an  age,  the  mad  wind's  nightwork, 
The  frolic  architecture  of  the  snow. 

No  student  of  the  poet  should  omit  to  read  and  re-read 
the  "  Wood  Notes  "  and  "  Monadnoc,"  among  the  nature 
pieces,  both  too  long  to  quote  here,  but  filled  with  noble 
passages,  and  very  typical  in  thought.  "  Forbearance  "  is 
so  brief  that  it  can  be  given :  — 

FORBEARANCE 

Hast  thou  named  all  the  birds  without  a  gun  ? 

Loved  the  wood  rose,  and  left  it  on  its  stalk? 

At  rich  men's  tables  eaten  bread  and  pulse? 

Unarmed,  faced  danger  with  a  heart  of  trust  ? 

And  loved  so  well  a  high  behavior, 

In  man  or  maid,  that  thou  from  speech  refrained, 

Nobility  more  nobly  to  repay? 

O,  be  my  friend,  and  teach  me  to  be  thine  ! 

Also  I  must  give  the  very  noble  "  Two  Rivers,"  in  which 
the  local  Concord  color  adds  to  its  attraction :  — 

TWO  RIVERS 

Thy  summer  voice,  Musketaquit, 

Repeats  the  music  of  the  rain ; 
But  sweeter  rivers  pulsing  flit 

Through  thee,  as  through  Concord  Plain. 


Kmerson  161 

Thou  in  thy  n.mow  l>.mk  ,  .ul  pent  : 

Thestie.im  I  love  impounded  goci 
Through  llo.nl  .Mid  se.i  ,uul  linn.  uncut  . 

Through  light.  through  lilo,  it  toiw.nd  tlows. 

I  See  the  inundation  -.  \veel. 

I   lu\  u   the  spending  ol  the  -.lir.un 
Thron:;h  vc.n  ..  through  men.  thi.Mi:;h  n.itnrcflcct, 

Through  love  .in.l  thon-ht.  lhi,»n-'i  |MH\CI  .nul  dlc.un. 


Miiskct.u|nil.  .t  i^oltlin  sii 
Of  sh.ml  .uul  Mini  in.iki  I  |c\v«  t  -  i;ay  : 

Tln-v  love  then   _«;iir!   uho  In  MI    hi  .   song, 
And  where  In   \\inds  is  the  day  of  day. 


So  forth  and  hli^litei    t.ne-.  in\    stie.un,— 

Who  drink  it  -.lull  not  thirst  .ii;.im  ; 
No  d.uknr  ,  ,  st.iiir,  its  e.|n.il 

And  ages  diop  in  it  like  i.un. 


Again,  the  familiar  "  Days"  is  .1  ^<>nd  example  of  the 
poem  whose  merit  is  suggestion,  .\nd  the  in.  inner  in  which 
it  stimulates  thought,  uiihont  the  leader  being  over  sure, 
it  may  be,  what  is  the  poet's  meaning:  — 

DAYS 

Daughters  of  Time,  the  hyfcocrttlc  Days, 

MulMed  .in.l   (liiinl.  like  kin-font    dervishes, 

And  in.  m  hin-   Miii'lr  111  .in  emllr'.'.  file, 

I'.iin:-.  di.iileni  .  .in.l  fagol  •  in  their  hands. 

To  each  they  offer  gifts  after  his  will, 

Bread,  kingdom,  si.n  -.  .md  sky  that  holds  them  all. 

I,  in  mv  ple.ielird  -.ml.  n,  \v.il<  lied  the  pomp, 
Forgot  my  mornm;;  \vr.hes,  h.r.lilv 
'I'ook  .1   lew   hdlr.  .ind  .ipplr.,  .md   the   H.iy 
Tiirm-d  .ind  drp.nl.  .1  '.ilent.       I,  tOO  late, 
Under  hci   solemn  lillel  saw  the  scorn. 
M 


1 62  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

How  full  of  suggestion,  too,  as  well  as  beauty,  is  the 
brief  poem  called  "  The  Test  " :  — 

THE  TEST 

(Musa  loquitur) 

I  hung  my  verses  in  the  wind, 

Time  and  tide  their  faults  may  find. 

All  were  winnowed  through  and  through, 

Five  lines  lasted  sound  and  true ; 

Five  were  smelted  in  a  pot 

Than  the  South  more  fierce  and  hot : 

These  the  siroc  could  not  melt, 

Fire  their  fiercer  flaming  felt, 

And  the  meaning  was  more  white 

Than  July's  meridian  light. 

Sunshine  cannot  bleach  the  snow, 

Nor  time  unmake  what  poets  know. 

Have  you  eyes  to  find  the  five 

Which  five  hundred  did  survive  ? 

& 

Of  all  Emerson's  larger  and  more  philosophical"  poems, 
none  is  so  full  of  a  deep  tenderness,  together  with  an 
admirable  bowing  of  the  heart  to  the  course  of  nature,  in 
faith,  as  "  The  Threnody,"  written  after  the  death  of  his 
favorite  son.  It  deals  with  great  simplicity,  yet  with  the 
profoundest  thought  and  superb  elevation  of  utterance, 
with  an  elemental  human  sorrow,  and  its  spirit  cannot  fail 
to  go  home  to  the  hearts  of  thousands  of  readers.  It 
reveals  a  religious  nature  passing  through  the  fiery  furnace 
of  affliction  and  coming  forth  purified  and  at  peace.  Every 
earnest  student  of  the  poet  should  make  it  his  own. 

Such  poems  as  these,  and  others  like  them  which  the 
reader,  once  indoctrinated  with  the  peculiar  charm  of 
Emerson,  will  readily  find  for  himself,  represent  the  work 


Emerson  1 63 

which  allows  the  name  of  maker  and  seer  to  be  duly 
awarded  to  him.  They  constitute  but  a  small  portion  of 
his  whole  poetic  writings.  He  has  a  less  happy  side. 
Long  pieces  like  "  Initial,  Daemonic  and  Celestial  Love  " 
—  to  name  but  one  —  are  often  involved,  harsh,  and  frag 
mentary  in  effect ;  they  lack  form  and  music  and  felicity 
of  phrase,  and  if  they  do  not  lack  meaning,  at  least  it  is 
sometimes  hard  to  find.  It  is  as  foolish  to  laud  such 
poems  as  successes  as  it  is  to  treat  Browning's  "  Sordello  " 
as  if  it  were  on  a  level  with  the  dramatic  monologues. 
But,  let  me  say  it  once  more  here,  a  poet  is  to  be  judged 
by  quality,  not  quantity,  by  his  best,  not  his  worst.  And 
in  quality  and  at  his  best,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  is  one 
of  the  high  peers  of  American  poetry,  the  singer-sage 
whose  voice  ever  calls  men  to  beauty,  to  duty,  and  to  God. 
While  the  memorials  of  Emerson's  anniversary  were 
being  held  in  the  beautiful  May  month  of  which  he  him 
self  chanted,  the  spectacle  was  an  enheartening  one  to  the 
lover  of  native  literature  and  of  his  native  land.  It  told 
how  in  a  day  when  Capital  talks  the  loudest,  and  Trusts 
do  multiply,  America  will  not  willingly  remove  from  their 
pedestals  the  men  of  thought  and  character  and  prophetic 
voice.  Among  such  Emerson  must  forever  stand,  a  cen 
tral  figure  of  calm  benignity,  of  beneficent  influence,  of 
unassailable  elevation. 


CHAPTER  VII 

BRYANT 

THE  poetry  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  is  of  importance 
in  the  history  of  American  song,  for  its  lucidity,  purity, 
and  high  moral  tone.  It  has  something  of  the  coldness  as 
well  as  of  the  clearness  of  the  mountain  stream.  There 
is  an  almost  austere  nobility  in  Bryant's  genius,  which, 
together  with  his  gift  for  imaginative  interpretation  of 
nature,  as  it  was  revealed  to  him  in  his  native  New  Eng 
land,  gives  him  a  distinction  seldom  attained.  His  art 
lacks  the  magic  of  Poe  but  it  is  simpler  and  saner.  He 
does  not,  as  a  rule,  grow  fervid  over  a  cause,  like  Whittier 
or  Lowell.  He  has  not  the  ease,  lightness,  and  depth  of 
Holmes,  nor  the  wide  range  and  genial  culture  of  Long 
fellow.  Yet,  in  its  way,  his  comparatively  slender  rill  of 
verse  is  as  greatly  prized  as  is  the  fuller  stream  of  almost 
any  of  our  native  singers.  When  he  is  not  observing  the 
beautiful  growths  of  nature  upon  the  level  earth,  he  seems 
to  dwell  upon  a  peak  and  to  be  in  communion  with  the 
high  things  that  there  abide.  The  accomplishment  of  this 
New  England  writer,  therefore,  is  one  of  the  most  impress 
ive  contributions  to  American  literature,  and  he  is  surely 
one  of  the  seven  great  poets  of  our  earlier  period  who  con 
stitute  a  sort  of  heptarchy  of  poetry. 

Bryant,  although  he  lived  half  a  century  in  New  York 
City,  and  is  commonly  grouped  with  the  Knickerbocker 

164 


Bryant  165 

writers,  was  in  cast  of  mind  and  quality  of  work  essen 
tially  of  the  New  England  which  gave  him  birth.  Up  to 
thirty  years  of  age  he  lived  in  Massachusetts,  and  he  came 
of  old  Massachusetts  stock,  the  original  ancestor  settling 
there  in  1632  ;  on  his  mother's  side  he  is  derived  from 
John  Alden.  One  of  the  interesting  offshoots  in  the 
story  of  American  literature  concerns  the  way  in  which  the 
men  of  New  England  have  come  down  into  New  York 
City  to  settle  there  and,  by  the  creative  work  they  did,  to 
add  to  its  fair  fame. 

It  was  in  the  little  village  of  Cummington,  which  lies 
among  the  Hampshire  hills  of  Massachusetts,  surrounded 
by  the  lovely  scenery  for  which  that  part  of  the  state  is 
widely  known,  that  Bryant  was  born  in  1794,  five  years 
after  Cooper.  His  breeding  was  that  of  a  country  boy. 
He  had  the  open  fields,  rivers,  and  hills  to  look  upon  and 
learn  to  love,  and  he  early  drank  in  the  beauty  of  his 
environment,  to  give  it  forth  later  in  terms  of  song.  His 
home  was  one  of  those  common  to  New  England  life  in 
the  earlier  days,  —  plain,  comfortable,  and  full  of  a  genuine 
good  breeding,  the  charm  of  a  true  gentility.  His  father 
was  a  respected  physician  who  served  his  state  in  the  leg 
islature,  and  whose  library  was  well  stocked  with  the 
standard  books,  —  he  was  even  known  to  drop  into  poetry 
himself  upon  occasion.  The  mother  was  one  of  those 
model  housewives  equally  at  home  in  kitchen  or  fore-room, 
and  of  an  influence  upon  her  son  potent  for  all  purposes 
of  education  in  the  deeper  meaning  of  that  sorely  strained 
word.  She  helped  him  in  his  letters  and  made  him  ready 
for  the  district  school.  He  was  a  precocious  lad  who 
could  read  at  an  astonishingly  early  age,  and  wrote  verse 
at  nine.  He  browsed  steadily  among  his  father's  books 


1 66  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

but  kept  a  healthy  appetite  for  outdoor  sports  and  occu 
pations,  and  was  familiar  with  the  old-time  country  work 
and  play,  to  be  found  in  haying-squads,  husking-bees,  and 
house-raisings.  Nothing  is  pleasanter  in  the  study  of 
American  literature  than  to  call  up  a  picture  of  the  country 
homes  of  such  literary  leaders  as  Whittier  and  Bryant, 
with  all  they  mean  for  wholesome  breeding,  influences  at 
once  homely  and  high  and  natural  arenas  for  the  develop 
ment  of  sturdy  homespun  character. 

Bryant,  be  it  understood,  was  a  lad  of  healthy,  natural 
tastes.  He  liked  to  fish  and  hunt,  and  knew  the  mysteries 
of  maple  sirup  making  in  the  spring  and  cider  making 
in  the  autumn.  It  is  a  pity  that  these  typical,  homely  ex 
periences  of  his  youth  so  rarely  got  into  his  verse.  His 
first  literary  efforts  were  far  from  realistic,  and  he  did  not, 
as  did  Whittier,  in  after  years,  look  back  upon  his  boy 
hood  and  write  another  "  Barefoot  Boy  "  or  "  Snow-Bound." 
In  1808,  when  he  was  thirteen,  there  was  published  in 
Boston  a  satiric  poem  called  "  The  Embargo,"  in  which 
Bryant  attacked  the  Jefferson  administration  for  closing 
our  ports  to  foreign  commerce.  Of  course,  the  theme,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  age  of  the  bard,  precluded  the  poem 
from  being  real  poetry,  and  the  piece  is  merely  a  curiosity, 
interesting  because  it  testifies  to  Bryant's  early  instinct 
for  verse  and  to  the  didactic  nature  of  his  message.  After 
the  home  instruction,  he  was  tutored  in  the  classics  by 
neighboring  clergymen,  and  in  1810-1811  passed  part  of 
the  year  as  a  sophomore  at  Williams  College ;  the  simplic 
ity  of  the  conditions  of  living  at  that  time  may  be  under 
stood  from  the  statement  that,  while  he  was  thus  being 
prepared  for  college,  he  paid  the  dominie  who  taught  him 
one  dollar  a  week  for  his  board  and  instruction.  Yet  the 


Bryant  .  167 

future  translator  of  Homer  got  a  solid  grounding  in  Greek 
from  the  country  parson.  Bryant's  father  did  not  feel 
able  to  carry  him  through  college,  so  the  boy  took  to 
law  (another  example  of  the  premature  choice  of  law  in 
stead  of  literature)  and  wrestled  with  legal  lore  at  Bridge- 
water  and  Worthington,  neighboring  towns.  But  his 
heart  was  elsewhere,  and  hardly  had  his  law  studies  be 
gun,  when  —  on  a  solitary  stroll  among  his  native  hills  in 
the  autumn  —  the  idea  for  the  poem  "  Thanatopsis  "  came 
to  him  and  it  was  written  in  1811,  before  he  was  seven 
teen.  It  was  an  extraordinary  performance,  a  remarkable 
poem  for  any  one  to  write,  but  close  to  a  miracle  as  coming 
from  a  country  lad  untrained  in  literary  technique  and, 
presumably,  immature  of  mind.  Yet,  read  to-day,  when 
it  takes  its  place  in  our  literature  as  one  of  the  permanent 
efforts,  it  is  seen  to  possess  a  maturity,  a  perfection  of 
form  as  well  as  of  thought  and  expression,  such  as  Bryant 
in  his  long  career  has  hardly  excelled.  Precedents  are 
upset  by  such  a  phenomenon.  At  the  time,  Bryant  had 
been  reading  Kirke  White's  somber  (not  to  say  lugubrious) 
poem  called  "  The  Grave,"  and  no  doubt  his  Vision  of 
Death  (the  meaning  of  the  Greek  title  "  Thanatopsis ") 
shows  this  influence ;  but  only  in  the  sense  in  which  a 
poem  of  the  first  rank  can  be  affected  by  one  upon  a  hope 
lessly  inferior  plane.  The  real  inspiration  of  the  piece 
came  from  within  himself  as  he  looked  out  upon  the 
beauty  of  nature  and  felt  the  force  of  its  spiritual  meaning. 
The  young  man  tucked  his  poem  away  in  his  desk, 
where  the  father  found  it,  and,  by  his  encouragement, 
induced  the  son  to  send  it,  without  the  fine  opening  lines 
and  the  still  finer  closing  passage,  to  the  North  American 
Review  of  Boston,  where  the  editors,  headed  by  R.  H. 


1 68  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Dana,  were  skeptical  of  its  being  written  by  an  American, 
attributing  it  to  some  one  of  the  well-known  British  poets. 
When  Dana  read  it  he  said  to  a  fellow-editor :  "  Phillips, 
you  have  been  imposed  upon ;  no  one  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  is  capable  of  writing  such  verses."  It  is  amus 
ing  to  know  that  they  accepted  the  poem  only  upon  the 
misunderstanding  that  it  was  by  Dr.  Bryant,  the  poet's 
father.  Had  they  been  told  its  author  was  a  country  lad 
of  seventeen,  no  doubt  they  would  have  flatly  refused 
to  be  parties  to  such  a  violation  of  all  proper  magazine 
tradition.  In  its  final  improved  form  the  poem  here  fol 
lows.  It  should  be  noted  that  blank  verse,  in  which 
"  Thanatopsis  "  is  written,  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  verse 
forms  for  the  beginner,  and,  as  a  rule,  only  mastered  if 
at  all  in  full  maturity. 

THANATOPSIS 

To  him  who  in  the  love  of  Nature  holds 
Communion  with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks 
A  various  language ;  for  his  gayer  hours 
She  has  a  voice  of  gladness,  and  a  smile 
And  eloquence  of  beauty,  and  she  glides 
Into  his  darker  musings,  with  a  mild 
And  healing  sympathy,  that  steals  away 
Their  sharpness,  ere  he  is  aware.     When  thoughts 
Of  the  last  bitter  hour  come  like  a  blight 
Over  thy  spirit,  and  sad  images 
Of  the  stern  agony,  and  shroud,  and  pall, 
And  breathless  darkness,  and  the  narrow  house 
Make  thee  to  shudder,  and  grow  sick  at  heart ;  — 
Go  forth,  under  the  open  sky,  and  list 
To  Nature's  teachings,  while  from  all  around  — 
Earth  and  her  waters,  and  the  depths  of  air,  — 
Comes  a  still  voice  —  Yet  a  few  days,  and  thee 


Bryant  169 

The  all-beholding  sun  shall  see  no  more 

In  all  his  course ;  nor  yet  in  the  cold  ground, 

Where  thy  pale  form  was  laid,  with  many  tears, 

Nor  in  the  embrace  of  ocean,  shall  exist 

Thy  image.     Earth,  that  nourished  thee,  shall  claim 

Thy  growth,  to  be  resolved  to  earth  again, 

And,  lost  each  human  trace,  surrendering  up 

Thine  individual  being,  shalt  thou  go 

To  mix  forever  with  the  elements, 

To  be  a  brother  to  the  insensible  rock 

And  to  the  sluggish  clod,  which  the  rude  swain 

Turns  with  his  share,  and  treads  upon.     The  oak 

Shall  send  his  roots  abroad,  and  pierce  thy  mold. 

Yet  not  to  thine  eternal  resting-place 
Shalt  thou  retire  alone,  nor  couldst  thou  wish 
Couch  more  magnificent.     Thou  shalt  lie  down 
With  patriarchs  of  the  infant  world  —  with  kings, 
The  powerful  of  the  earth  —  the  wise,  the  good, 
Fair  forms,  and  hoary  seers  of  ages  past, 
All  in  one  mighty  sepulcher.     The  hills, 
Rock-ribbed  and  ancient  as  the  sun,  —  the  vales 
Stretching  in  pensive  quietness  between  ; 
The  venerable  woods  —  rivers  that  move 
In  majesty,  and  the  complaining  brooks 
That  make  the  meadows  green  ;  and,  poured  round  all, 
Old  ocean's  gray  and  melancholy  waste,  — 
Are  but  the  solemn  decorations  all 
Of  the  great  tomb  of  man.     The  golden  sun, 
The  planets,  all  the  infinite  host  of  heaven, 
Are  shining  on  the  sad  abodes  of  death, 
Through  the  still  lapse  of  ages.     All  that  tread 
The  globe  are  but  a  handful  to  the  tribes 
That  slumber  in  its  bosom.  —  Take  the  wings 
Of  morning,  pierce  the  Barcan  wilderness, 
Or  lose  thyself  in  the  continuous  woods 
Where  rolls  the  Oregon,  and  hears  no  sound, 


170  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Save  his  own  dashings  —  yet  —  the  dead  are  there : 
And  millions  in  those  solitudes,  since  first 
The  flight  of  years  began,  have  laid  them  down 
In  their  last  sleep  —  the  dead  reign  there  alone. 
So  shalt  thou  rest,  and  what  if  thou  withdraw 
In  silence  from  the  living,  and  no  friend 
Take  note  of  thy  departure  ?    All  that  breathe 
Will  share  thy  destiny.    The  gay  will  laugh 
When  thou  art  gone,  the  solemn  brood  of  care 
Plod  on,  and  each  one  as  before  will  chase 
His  favorite  phantom  ;  yet  all  these  shall  leave 
Their  mirth  and  their  employments,  and  shall  come 
And  make  their  bed  with  thee.    As  the  long  train 
Of  ages  glide  away,  the  sons  of  men, 
The  youth  in  life's  green  spring,  and  he  who  goes 
In  the  full  strength  of  years,  matron,  and  maid, 
The  speechless  babe,  and  the  gray-headed  man,  — 
Shall  one  by  one  be  gathered  to  thy  side, 
By  those,  who  in  their  turn  shall  follow  them. 

So  live,  that  when  thy  summons  comes  to  join 
The  innumerable  caravan,  which  moves 
To  that  mysterious  realm,  where  each  shall  take 
His  chamber  in  the  silent  halls  of  death, 
Thou  go  not,  like  the  quarry-slave  at  night, 
Scourged  to  his  dungeon,  but,  sustained  and  soothed 
By  an  unfaltering  trust,  approach  thy  grave, 
Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his  couch 
About  him,  and  lies  down  to  pleasant  dreams. 

Meanwhile,  Bryant  went  steadily  on  with  his  law  studies, 
for  this  great  first  poem  of  his  was  not  published  until 
1817  ;  and,  as  might  be  expected,  did  not  draw  general 
attention  to  him  when  it  did  appear,  although  a  critic  here 
and  there  recognized  its  quality.  But  nature  —  the  poetic 
nature  in  this  case  —  cannot  be  coerced;  and  as  young 


Bryant  171 

Bryant  walked  to  a  neighboring  town  late  one  afternoon 
for  the  purpose  of  finding  a  good  place  in  which  to  hang 
out  his  shingle,  he  saw  a  solitary  bird  winging  its  way 
across  the  sunset  sky,  silhouetted  against  the  flame  of 
color,  —  and  wrote  another  classic,  "To  a  Water-fowl," 
equally  expressive  of  his  genius  and  saturated  with  the 
calm  beauty  and  deep  religious  feeling  of  all  his  work. 
There  is  in  it  a  noble  melancholy  saved  from  being  morbid 
by  the  consolation  of  faith :  — 

TO  A  WATER-FOWL 

Whither,  midst  falling  dew, 

While  glow  the  heavens  with  the  last  steps  of  day, 
Far,  through  their  rosy  depths,  dost  thou  pursue 

Thy  solitary  way  ? 

Vainly  the  fowler's  eye 

Might  mark  thy  distant  flight  to  do  thee  wrong, 
As,  darkly  seen  against  the  crimson  sky, 

Thy  figure  floats  along. 

Seek'st  thou  the  plashy  brink 
Of  weedy  lake,  or  marge  of  river  wide, 
Or  where  the  rocking  billows  rise  and  sink 

On  the  chafed  ocean  side  ? 

There  is  a  Power  whose  care 
Teaches  thy  way  along  that  pathless  coast,— 
The  desert  and  illimitable  air,  — 

Lone  wandering,  but  not  lost. 

All  day  thy  wings  have  fanned, 
At  that  far  height,  the  cold,  thin  atmosphere, 
Yet,  stoop  not,  weary,  to  the  welcome  land, 

Though  the  dark  night  is  near. 


172  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

And  soon  that  toil  shall  end ; 
Soon  shalt  thou  find  a  summer  home,  and  rest, 
And  scream  among  thy  fellows ;  reeds  shall  bend, 

Soon,  o'er  thy  sheltered  nest. 

Thou'rt  gone,  the  abyss  of  heaven 
Hath  swallowed  up  thy  form ;  yet,  on  my  heart 
Deeply  hath  sunk  the  lesson  thou  hast  given, 

And  shall  not  soon  depart. 

He  who,  from  zone  to  zone, 

Guides  through  the  boundless  sky  thy  certain  flight. 
In  the  long  way  that  I  must  tread  alone, 

Will  lead  my  steps  aright. 


Bryant  married  Frances  Fairchild  while  still  very  young, 
and,  after  a  year  of  law  practice  at  Plainfield,  and  nine  years 
more  of  it  at  Great  Harrington,  —  quite  enough  to  show 
him  that  he  did  not  like  the  profession,  —  he  went  in  1825 
to  New  York  City,  ambitious  of  a  wider  field  and  a  change 
of  work.  He  was  then  a  little  over  thirty,  and  he  solved 
the  practical  problem  of  livelihood  by  adopting  newspaper 
work  as  a  profession,  one,  by  the  way,  that  has  been  a  good 
staff  for  many  of  our  American  makers  of  literature.  He  had 
some  hard  sledding  at  the  outset,  but  several  experiments  on 
other  papers  led  up  to  an  associate  editorship  of  the  Even 
ing  Post  in  1826  ;  and  three  years  later  he  became  editor- 
in-chief,  and  acquired  an  interest  in  the  paper.  For  almost 
half  a  century  he  held  this  conspicuous  post  in  American 
journalism  and  brought  the  paper  into  a  position  of  influ 
ence  for  its  honesty,  ability,  and  high,  clean  methods, 
which  still  gives  it  a  unique  place  among  American  news 
papers,  —  an  influence  the  traditions  of  which  have  been 


Bryant  173 

carried  on,  with  some  personal  variations,  by  the  late  E.  L. 
Godkin,  whose  recent  death  removed  one  of  the  aggres 
sively  striking  figures  of  the  newspaper  world. 

Bryant's  personal  effect  —  and  the  more  impersonal 
effect  of  his  journal  —  was  an  incalculable  service  in  ele 
vating  the  general  tone  of  our  newspapers ;  and  he  is  an 
illustration  of  the  fact  that  even  in  the  much-maligned 
newspaper,  the  mind  behind  the  editorial  can  be  a  force 
which,  if  directed  to  high  aims,  and  controlled  by  high 
ideals,  makes  the  newspaper  one  of  the  worthy  educational 
forces  of  the  day.  So  long  was  Bryant's  life  that,  at  one 
end,  it  touched  the  War  of  1812 — for  he  was  an  ardent 
secessionist  in  those  days,  joining  the  militia  for  the 
defense  of  the  state  against  the  demands  of  an  unreason 
able  government  —  and  the  administration  of  Hayes  at 
the  other.  His  metropolitan  residence,  with  its  steadily 
growing  success  and  beneficent  influence,  was  varied  by 
half  a  dozen  or  more  trips  to  Europe  and  the  Orient,  to 
Cuba,  Mexico,  and  the  West  Indies,  and  these  opportuni 
ties  for  culture  broadened  him  as  a  man  and  added  to  his 
capacity  as  an  interpreter  of  affairs.  Before  his  death  he 
had  come  to  be  regarded  as  the  leading  figure  in  journal 
ism  and  in  many  ways  New  York's  first  citizen.  In  1843 
he  bought  his  suburban  estate  near  Roslyn,  Long  Island, 
where  he  made  his  home  and  was  buried  ;  he  also  acquired 
in  1865,  the  year  he  lost  his  wife,  the  family  homestead  at 
Cummington,  to  which  town  he  gave  a  public  library  in 
1872,  half  a  dozen  years  before  his  death.  Coming  of  a 
sturdy  stock,  and  having  through  his  life  the  most  careful 
habits  of  regimen  and  regularity  in  his  daily  walks  and 
ways,  Bryant  not  only  lived  to  an  extreme  old  age  but 
retained  his  faculties,  mental  and  physical,  marvelously  to 


174  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

his  last,  making  in  his  personal  appearance  a  splendidly 
patriarchal  effect.  He  is  described  by  Parke  Godwin,  his 
son-in-law  and  biographer,  as  of  "  medium  height,  spare 
in  figure,  with  a  clean-shaven  face,  unusually  large 
head,  bright  eyes,  and  a  wearied,  severe,  almost  saturnine 
expression  of  countenance.  One,  however,  remarked  at 
once  the  exceeding  gentleness  of  his  manner,  and  a  rare 
sweetness  in  the  tone  of  his  voice,  as  well  as  an  extraordi 
nary  purity  in  his  selection  and  pronunciation  of  English." 
How  such  a  man  kept  his  health  and  strength  in  so 
remarkable  a  degree  when  he  was  nearer  eighty  than 
seventy,  still  active  at  his  office,  and  engaged  at  home  in 
his  Greek  translation,  is  perhaps  largely  explained  by  the 
fact  that  he  exercised  an  hour  before  breakfast  with  dumb 
bells  and  other  gymnastic  appliances,  avoided  animal  food 
except  at  dinner,  and  then  using  mostly  vegetables ;  and 
that  he  walked  three  miles  each  day  to  and  from  the  office 
of  the  Evening  Post,  spending  but  three  hours  at  his  news 
paper  work.  He  never  touched  tea  or  coffee  and  rarely  a 
glass  of  wine.  During  his  old  age  he  solaced  himself  at 
home  with  practical  studies,  translating  the  "  Iliad  "  and 
"Odyssey"  into  blank  verse,  which,  for  accuracy  and 
nobility,  still  ranks  well  among  the  many  Homeric  versions. 
These  he  completed  when  he  was  seventy-seven. 

Bryant's  death  in  his  eighty-fourth  year  was  the  result 
of  an  accident,  and  he  was  still  wonderfully  vigorous 
for  that  age.  In  the  spring  of  1878  he  addressed  an 
audience  in  Central  Park  on  the  occasion  of  the  raising 
of  a  statue  to  the  Italian,  Mazzini.  It  was  a  warm  day, 
and,  with  his  hat  off,  he  was  exposed  to  the  rays  of  the  sun. 
Afterwards,  as  he  ascended  the  stone  steps  of  the  house 
of  General  Wilson,  he  fell,  struck  his  head  on  the  stones, 


Bryant  175 

and  concussion  of  the  brain  followed.  He  died  after  lying 
two  weeks  in  a  comatose  condition. 

The  character  of  Bryant,  as  it  is  shown  by  many  memo 
rials  and  witnesses,  was  high,  pure,  and  admirable,  rather 
than  of  the  sort  which  awakens  fervid  love.  No  man  was 
more  respected  and  revered ;  but  Hawthorne  and  many 
others  found  him  cold.  He  had  the  New  England  reserve, 
he  did  not  make  a  magnetic  impression,  did  not  enter  into 
impulsive,  warm-hearted  contact  with  his  fellow-men.  It 
is  said  that  in  his  home  life  the  real  warmth  of  his  nature 
was  revealed,  the  volcano  beneath  the  snow.  It  may  be 
that  to  call  him  cold,  meaning  thereby  that  he  lacked 
human  sympathy,  is  misleading,  even  unjust.  But  many 
anecdotes  are  afloat  to  indicate  that  Bryant  did  possess  a 
certain  temperamental  coldness,  a  quality  of  reserve.  He 
was  frugal,  careful,  cautious ;  good  traits  all,  but  not  such 
as  to  fire  the  onlooker  to  enthusiastic  praise.  And  his 
song  reflects  this  nature,  both  in  its  limitations  and  its 
excellences. 

Bryant  published  many  books  during  his  long  career, 
and  a  number  of  them  were  prose,  travel  articles,  and  occa 
sional  addresses,  admirable  for  their  purpose.  His  prose 
was  excellent  and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  did  much  to  elevate 
editorial  style  and  exercised  a  wholesomely  conservative 
effect  upon  the  English  idiom  of  to-day.  But  this  side  of 
his  activity  counts  for  nothing  in  the  study  of  him  as  a 
leader  in  American  literature.  His  fame  rests  entirely 
upon  his  poetry.  He  printed  numerous  volumes  of  verse, 
from  the  "  Poems  "of  1821  to  a  volume  in  1863,  in  which 
appears  "  The  Planting  of  the  Apple  Tree."  It  was  his 
way  in  each  successive  book  to  add  a  number  of  new 
pieces,  retaining  those  in  the  earlier  collections.  His 


ij6  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

total  poetic  contribution,  therefore,  was  not  large  in 
extent;  moreover,  most  of  it  had  been  written  by  1832, 
when  he  was  still  under  forty,  although  a  few  favorites  — 
like  "  Robert  of  Lincoln,"  which  was  printed  in  the  vol 
ume  of  1854  —  came  later.  But  Bryant  is  a  most  remark 
able  example  of  a  distinctive  poet  who  reached  maturity 
very  young,  showed  his  real  quality  there  and  then,  and 
made  small  departures  from  this  announcement  of  his 
quality,  in  spite  of  the  manifold  experiences  of  an  unusu 
ally  long  and  richly  fruitful  career.  Perhaps  it  is  because 
his  daily  work  was  a  practical  one,  and  verse  always  aside 
from  the  main  employment.  The  boy  of  seventeen  who 
wrote  "  Thanatopsis,"  the  young  man  who  composed  "  To 
a  Water-fowl "  before  he  attained  his  majority,  does  not 
appear  to  have  gained  from  well-nigh  three-quarters  <f  CT, 
century  of  living,  a  lovelier  note  of  music  or  a  deeper 
philosophy.  He  simply  added  other  noble  and  beautiful 
things ;  but  growth  he  hardly  displays.  In  this  respect 
Bryant  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  poetic  history.  But 
his  case  suggests  the  validity  of  the  poetic  gift  which 
transcends  rule  and  reverses  theories. 

A  little  consideration  of  Bryant's  poetry  makes  apparent 
its  deservedly  high  standing  as  well  as  the  lack  of  range 
and  narrowness  of  appeal  which  helped  to  make  its  influ 
ence.  A  poet  who  clearly  sings  one  song  is  more  likely 
to  be  heard  than  another  who.  like  a  mocking-bird,  takes 
on  the  voice  of  many  singers,  or  who,  without  imitation, 
yet  has  the  effect  of  being  many  rather  than  one.  With 
such  an  one,  it  is  harder  to  define  his  aim  and  to  feel 
his  unity.  Bryant's  verse  is,  for  the  most  part,  grave, 
restrained,  unimpassioned,  meditative,  fraught  with  reflec 
tion  ;  but  so  high  and  clear  and  sweet,  that  no  note  in  the 


Bryant  177 

American  song  garden  floats  to  us  with  a  more  pellucid 
charm.  In  many  ways  he  now  seems  old-fashioned.  His 
education,  in  the  time  in  which  his  formative  period  fell, 
led  him  to  use  largely  the  language  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  bards,  modifying  and  purifying  it,  however,  by 
virtue  of  his  native  talent.  In  the  handling  of  meters  in 
stanzaic  forms,  too,  he  preferred  the  simpler  art  of  the 
period  before  the  rhythmic  and  formal  intricacies  of  mas 
ters  like  Poe  and  Swinburne  and  Lanier.  As  to  themes, 
he  dwelt  reflectively  upon  nature  in  relation  to  man ;  he 
brooded  upon  life  and  its  moral  meaning  and  upon  death, 
its  issue,  relieved  by  the  spiritual  hope  that  lessens  its 
terror  and  makes  it  the  threshold  of  the  better  life.  Thus, 
a  certain  brooding  melancholy  in  him,  a  sweet  pensiveness, 
is  tempered  by  the  religious  consolation  of  his  song  which 
is  also  a  characteristic  of  the  elder  New  England  poets  as 
a  whole,  and  justifies  us  in  placing  Bryant  with  them  (in 
his  spirit,  I  mean)  rather  than  with  the  New  York  Knicker 
bockers.  These  poets,  and  none  of  them  more  than 
Bryant,  love  what  has  been  irreverently  called  "  the  moral 
tag"  ;  they  liked  to  make  a  didactic  application  of  a  poetic 
scene  or  thought,  to  drive  the  lesson  home.  This  has  an 
effect  of  old-fashionedness  in  our  day,  when  it  is  more 
popular  to  offer  something  beautiful  and  let  it  speak  for 
itself.  But,  questionless,  the  major  American  poets  have 
secured  their  permanent  place  and  are  beloved  by  the 
people,  partly  because  of  this  same  moral  message  of 
theirs. 

No  side  of  Bryant's  song  is  more  appreciated  than  his 
nature  pieces.  We  have  already  listened  to  one,  —  "  The 
Water-fowl."  Here  is  another  favorite,  representative 
both  for  its  tenderness,  the  observing  eye  of  the  lover  of 


178  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

flower  and  bird,  and  shifting  season,  and,  too,  for  the  inev 
itable  application  at  the  end  to  the  human  case,  generally 
the  poet's  own. 

TO  THE  FRINGED  GENTIAN 

Thou  blossom  bright  with  autumn  dew, 
And  colored  with  the  heaven's  own  blue, 
That  openest  when  the  quiet  light 
Succeeds  the  keen  and  frosty  night. 

Thou  comest  not  when  violets  lean 
O'er  wandering  brooks  and  springs  unseen, 
Or  columbines,  in  purple  dressed, 
Nod  o'er  the  ground- bird's  hidden  nest. 

Thou  waitest  late  and  com'st  alone, 
When  woods  are  bare  and  birds  are  flown, 
And  frosts  and  shortening  days  portend 
The  aged  year  is  near  his  end. 

Then  doth  thy  sweet  and  quiet  eye 
Look  through  its  fringes  to  the  sky, 
Blue  —  blue  —  as  if  that  sky  let  fall 
A  flower  from  its  cerulean  wall. 

I  would  that  thus,  when  I  shall  see 
The  hour  of  death  draw  near  to  me, 
Hope,  blossoming  within  my  heart, 
May  look  to  heaven  as  I  depart. 

An  elegiac  quality  is  pronounced  in  the  familiar  "  Death 
of  the  Flowers,"  simple  almost  to  bareness,  but  truly 
charming  in  the  limning  of  nature  in  the  first  four  stan 
zas.  Bryant  wrote  numerous  sonorous  poems  in  blank 
verse,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  had  a  special  aptitude  for 
that  large-moving,  grave,  majestic  form.  Along  with  the 


Bryant  179 

"  Thanatopsis,"  a  "  Forest  Hymn  "  may  be  read  in  further 
illustration  of  this  phase  of  his  work ;  it  contains  lines 
often  to  be  met  with  in  quotation.  "  The  Flood  of  Years  " 
also  belongs  to  this  class  and  is  one  of  the  most  admired 
of  his  longer  pieces.  They  display  Bryant's  tendency  to 
large,  grandiose  effects,  treating  them  with  a  kind  of  Olym 
pian  sweep  which  is  in  consonance  with  the  mighty  things 
he  hymns.  Yet  his  triumphs,  on  the  whole,  are  to  be 
found  in  the  simpler  and  shorter  lyrics.  He  is  essentially 
a  reflective  lyric  poet ;  his  was  not  the  dramatic  power  of 
scene-painting  and  situation  nor  the  constructive  gift  for 
narrative.  Very  early  he  found  his  metier  and  wisely  he 
kept  to  it.  Love  —  the  more  passionate  love  between  the 
sexes  —  does  not  enter  his  song  to  give  it  a  warmer  color, 
a  vernal  glamour  and  thrill. 

When,  as  occasionally  happens,  he  essays  the  patriotic, 
he  produces  in  a  poem  like  "  America,"  something  that  is 
adequate  and  dignified  but  not  compelling.  The  leap 
and  fervor  which  Whittier  or  Lowell  would  have  given  us 
are  absent.  "The  Battlefield"  is  far  finer  (the  ninth 
stanza,  often  reproduced,  is  notable)  and  may  be  read  as  a 
favorable  example  of  this  mood  of  his  Muse. 

It  will  be  well,  perhaps,  in  leaving  Bryant,  to  have 
lingering  in  our  ears  for  musical  and  happy  memory,  such 
a  lyric  as  "  Robert  of  Lincoln  " :  — 

ROBERT  OF  LINCOLN 

Merrily  swinging  on  brier  and  weed, 
Near  to  the  nest  of  his  little  dame, 
Over  the  mountain-side  or  mead, 

Robert  of  Lincoln  is  telling  his  name: 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-oMink, 
Spink.  spank,  spink ; 


180  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Snug  and  safe  is  that  nest  of  ours, 
Hidden  among  the  summer  flowers. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 


Robert  of  Lincoln  is  gayly  drest, 

Wearing  a  bright  black  wedding  coat ; 
White  are  his  shoulders  and  white  his  crest, 
Hear  him  call  in  his  merry  note : 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 
Look,  what  a  nice  new  coat  is  mine, 
Sure  there  was  never  a  bird  so  fine. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 

Robert  of  Lincoln's  Quaker  wife, 

Pretty  and  quiet,  with  plain  brown  wings, 
Passing  at  home  a  patient  life, 

Broods  in  the  grass  while  her  husband  sings 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 
Brood,  kind  creature ;  you  need  not  fear 
Thieves  and  robbers  while  I  am  here. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 

Modest  and  shy  as  a  nun  is  she ; 

One  weak  chirp  is  her  only  note. 
Braggart  and  prince  of  braggarts  is  he, 
Pouring  boasts  from  his  little  throat : 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 
Never  was  I  afraid  of  man ; 
Catch  me,  cowardly  knaves,  if  you  can. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 

Six  white  eggs  on  a  bed  of  hay, 

Flecked  with  purple,  a  pretty  sight ! 


Bryant  181 


There  as  the  mother  sits  all  day, 
Robert  is  singing  with  all  his  might : 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 
Nice  good  wife,  that  never  goes  out, 
Keeping  house  while  I  frolic  about. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 

Soon  as  the  little  ones  chip  the  shell 
Six  wide  mouths  are  open  for  food. 
Robert  of  Lincoln  bestirs  him  well. 
Gathering  seeds  for  the  hungry  brood. 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 
This  new  life  is  likely  to  be 
Hard  for  a  gay  young  fellow  like  me. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 

Robert  of  Lincoln  at  length  is  made 

Sober  with  work,  and  silent  with  care ; 
Off  is  his  holiday  garment  laid, 
Half  forgotten  that  merry  air, 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 
Nobody  knows  but  my  mate  and  I 
Where  our  nest  and  our  nestlings  lie. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 

Summer  wanes ;  the  children  are  grown ; 

Fun  and  frolic  no  more  he  knows ; 
Robert  of  Lincoln's  a  humdrum  crone ; 
Off  he  flies,  and  we  sing  as  he  goes : 
Bob-o'-link,  bob-o'-link, 
Spink,  spank,  spink ; 

When  you  can  pipe  that  merry  old  strain, 
Robert  of  Lincoln,  come  back  again. 
Chee,  chee,  chee. 


1 82  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

William  Cullen  Bryant  is  justly  called  the  Patriarch  of 
American  Poetry.  He  is  in  time  the  first  of  our  major 
poets.  His  "  Thanatopsis,"  written  when  Poe  was  an 
infant,  was  the  first  fruit  of  the  rich  harvesting  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  *  In  quality  and  kind  he  is  the  Ameri 
can  Wordsworth,  though  by  no  means  the  peer  of  the 
great  English  singer  of  nature.  He  sits  apart,  and,  with 
a  voice  serene,  calm,  high,  and  of  a  silvery  sweetness,  still 
calls  upon  all  Americans  who  are  sensitive  to  the  spiritual 
meaning  in  the  external  universe  and  who  are  willing  to 
listen  to  wise  meditations  upon  life  and  death  and  the 
Great  Beyond.  He  is  a  poet  more  likely  to  please,  to 
console,  and  to  uplift  the  mature  who  have  lived  and  suf 
fered  and  gained  depth  through  living,  than  the  young 
who  are  carried  away  by  passion  and  leaping  music  and 
the  stormy  felicities  of  new  life.  To  be  thus  a  consoler  of 
the  later  years  is  a  mission,  and  worthily  does  Bryant 
fulfill  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LONGFELLOW 

ONE  of  the  distinctions  of  Longfellow  among  the  Ameri 
can  poets  is  that,  while  he  was  a  poet  of  culture  —  a  man 
of  scholarly  habits  who  had  widely  assimilated  continental 
literature  and  often  drew  upon  his  culture  for  his  themes 
—  yet  he  was  quite  as  truly  a  popular  poet.  His  song 
went  home  to  the  general  heart,  his  poems  became  a 
household  possession. 

As  more  and  more  of  critical  attention  has  been  directed 
to  the  American  singers  of  an  earlier  generation,  the  esti 
mate  of  Longfellow  has  come  to  be  somewhat  different 
from  that  which  existed  at  the  time  of  his  death  and  which 
encouraged  him  during  his  life-work.  Transatlantic  criti 
cism,  where  it  does  not  deny  to  Poe  and  Emerson  and 
Hawthorne  the  right  to  a  place  with  the  more  permanent 
literary  forces,  inclines  to  relegate  Longfellow  to  a  less 
significant  position.  He  is  named  as  a  pleasing  poet  with 
out  real  or  much  originality  and  distinction.  Some  critics 
even  go  so  far  as  to  refer  to  him  half  contemptuously  as 
a  sort  of  sounding-board  of  foreign  tones.  At  home, 
while  his  popularity  is  still  firmly  fixed,  it  cannot  be  de 
nied  that  the  critical  regard  of  him  has  somewhat  altered. 
I  shall  wish  to  show,  however,  in  the  following  pages  that 
there  is  ample  reason  for  placing  him  with  the  major 
American  poets. 


184  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Longfellow  was  born  in  1807,  two  years  before  Holmes, 
but  he  died  more  than  a  decade  earlier,  and  this  makes 
him  seem  farther  back  in  time  as  a  literary  figure.  Al 
though  so  long  and  intimately  associated  with  Massachu 
setts,  with  the  social  and  intellectual  life  of  Cambridge 
and  Boston,  he  was  a  Maine  boy,  whose  native  place  was 
Portland,  where  his  father  was  a  distinguished  lawyer  and 
a  trustee  of  Bowdoin  College.  The  story  of  the  poet's  life 
is  not  like  that  of  Bryant  or  Whittier,  —  the  country  lad 
accomplishing  great  things  from  humble  beginnings. 
Longfellow's  lot,  contrariwise,  was  fair  and  fortunate 
throughout  his  days  ;  if  we  except  a  tragic  sorrow  in  his 
home  —  the  loss  of  his  second  wife  by  fire.  But  viewing 
his  life  as  a  whole,  externally  it  was  notably  unruffled, 
while  within  was  the  calm  of  a  character  in  which  the 
elements  were  wisely  blended  and  made  but  the  more 
symmetrical  by  the  passage  of  the  years. 

The  New  England  blood  in  him  was  of  the  best;  his 
mother  was  a  Wadsworth,  and  on  her  side  he  traced  back 
to  John  Alden  of  bashful  memory,  whom  he  was  to  immor 
talize  in  one  of  his  poems.  From  boyhood  into  manhood 
and  through  maturity  to  a  noble  old  age,  we  find  in  Henry 
Wadsworth  Longfellow  an  essentially  sweet,  sane,  fine  na 
ture.  Without  being  a  prig  or  a  softling,  he  was  as  a  child 
gentler  and  more  sensitive  to  fine  appeals  than  the  aver 
age  lad ;  yet  a  hearty,  handsome  fellow,  by  all  accounts, 
quick  tempered  but  kind  and  affectionate,  "  the  sunlight 
of  the  house." 

Portland  was  a  good  town  to  be  young  and  grow  up  in, 
with  its  long  sea  beach  and  mysterious  merchant  ships 
from  afar,  that  lay  at  its  wharves.  Long  afterwards,  in 
one  of  his  best  poems,  "  My  Lost  Youth,"  he  sang :  — 


Longfellow  185 

I  remember  the  black  wharves  and  the  slips 

And  the  sea-tides  tossing  free ; 
And  the  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 

And  the  magic  of  the  sea. 

The  young  Longfellow  was  fond  of  his  books,  and  a 
rhymster  at  thirteen,  at  which  formidable  age  a  piece  of 
verse  by  him  appeared  in  a  local  paper.  Of  this,  and  his 
early  efforts  in  general,  it  may  be  said  that  they  were  not 
remarkable,  —  which  is  a  comfort  rather  than  otherwise, 
for  a  young  precocity  is  of  dubious  promise  for  the  mature 
performance.  He  was  educated  privately  and  at  Portland 
Academy,  and  entered  Bowdoin  as  a  sophomore,  to  find 
one  classmate,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  who  like  himself 
was  to  become  famous  in  literature.  Very  wisely,  as  it 
turned  out,  Longfellow  while  he  was  an  undergraduate 
wrote  prose  and  verse  steadily,  contributing  to  such  maga 
zines  as  would  take  his  literary  efforts ;  and  thus  made 
progress  in  forming  his  style  and  learning  what  his  bent 
really  was.  He  was  all  for  literature  in  these  early  days. 
He  stood  well  in  college,  being  graduated  fourth  in  a  class 
numbering  about  forty.  A  sign  of  the  good  impression 
he  had  made  came  when,  at  the  end  of  his  course,  the 
Bowdoin  trustees  proposed  that  he  should  go  abroad  to 
fit  himself  to  take  the  new  chair  of  modern  languages. 
The  suggestion  was  entirely  congenial  to  his  tastes. 
There  had  been  some  talk  of  the  law  for  him,  which  was 
naturally  his  father's  notion.  The  senior  Longfellow  had 
the  practical  man's  usual  attitude  toward  letters :  "  A  lit 
erary  life,  to  one  who  has  the  means  of  support,"  he  wrote 
to  his  son,  "  must  be  very  pleasant,  but  there  is  not  enough 
wealth  in  this  country  to  afford  encouragement  and  patron- 


1 86  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

age  to  merely  literary  men."  There  is,  perhaps,  a  touch 
of  the  patronizing  in  this,  but  its  sound  common  sense  is 
undeniable.  Certainly,  to  Longfellow,  the  would-be  poet, 
in  the  summer  following  his  graduation,  the  outlook  for 
the  aspirant  was  not  brilliant.  Bryant  was  publishing  his 
early  poems,  but  otherwise  the  song  garden  seemed  voice 
less  ;  but  in  this  offer  of  a  college  position  was  work  in  the 
line  of  his  ability  and  liking ;  so  the  next  three  years  were 
spent  in  England  and  on  the  continent  in  fruitful  and  de 
lightful  study  and  sight-seeing.  The  young  Bowdoin  man 
was  peculiarly  responsive  to  the  old-world  effect,  —  its 
legends  and  folklore,  its  time-soaked  associations  and 
traditions,  its  storied  treasures  of  art,  and  brilliant  pano 
rama  of  nature.  What  he  absorbed  during  this  forma 
tive  period  (Longfellow  was  but  nineteen  when  he  sailed) 
was  potent  in  coloring  his  whole  after-life  as  an  author. 
His  first  creative  work,  the  prose  "  Outre  Mer,"  a  delight 
ful  travel  sketch  in  the  tradition  and  under  the  influence 
of  Irving,  testifies  in  name  and  quality  to  this  rich  expe 
rience  over-seas. 

A  young  man,  then,  of  only  twenty-two,  he  returned  in 
1829  to  begin  his  teaching  at  Bowdoin  ;  and  until  he  was 
not  far  from  fifty,  Longfellow  was  a  teacher,  a  college 
professor  at  Bowdoin  and  Harvard  —  popular  and  most 
effective  in  his  work.  It  is  well  known  that  he  finally 
abandoned  it  because  he  felt  it  hampered  his  literary 
work,  even  choked  his  poetry.  Shortly  before  resigning 
his  Harvard  chair,  he  wrote :  "  This  college  work  is  like 
a  great  hand  laid  on  all  the  strings  of  my  lyre,  stopping 
their  vibration."  We  shall  find  Lowell  making  similar 
plaint  about  his  college  lectures.  Yet  it  would  not  be 
quite  fair,  perhaps,  to  Longfellow's  college  work  to  over- 


Longfellow  187 

look  the  fact  that  these  words  may  have  been  the  expres 
sion  of  a  mood,  and  that  much  in  the  vocation  of  teacher 
appealed  to  him  and  was  heartily  enjoyed.  His  was  a 
nature  sympathetic  and  kindly ;  he  loved  languages  and 
literature,  and  could  not  fail  to  get  pleasure  from  their 
impartation.  Those  who  were  his  students,  testify  to  the 
exquisite  courtliness  and  courtesy  of  his  manner  in  the 
classroom. 

The  Bowdoin  professorship  was  held  six  years,  and  then 
came,  in  1835,  another  year  abroad,  spent  in  Denmark, 
Sweden,  Holland,  and  other  lands.  His  young  wife  (he 
had  married  Mary  S.  Potter,  in  1831)  died  in  Rotterdam,  — 
Longfellow's  first  great  sorrow ;  and  it  is  not  fanciful  to 
see  in  his  poetry,  after  this  loss,  a  deeper  note  of  human 
sympathy.  During  the  Bowdoin  years  his  scholarly  book 
work  had  begun,  for  in  1833  he  published  a  Spanish  trans 
lation,  while  on  the  side  of  verse,  his  maiden  volume  of 
poems  had  appeared  in  the  year  of  his  departure  for  the 
European  study.  Upon  the  second  return  from  Europe, 
Longfellow  took  the  chair  of  Romance  languages  at  Har 
vard,  of  which  the  earlier  occupant  had  been  Ticknor,  the 
historian,  and  became  one  of  the  notable  figures  in  scho 
lastic  circles  as  well  as  conspicuous  socially  in  a  Boston 
and  Cambridge  group,  made  of  such  men  of  mark  as  Pro 
fessor  Norton,  Sumner,  Hawthorne,  the  historians  Tick 
nor  and  Prescott,  Lowell,  Agassiz,  and  Holmes,  —  indeed, 
by  the  testimony  of  Colonel  Higginson,  in  some  sort  its 
center.  Longfellow  had  great  social  aptitudes  ;  his  whole 
some,  attractive  personality  and  essential  kindliness  of 
nature,  as  well  as  his  accomplishments,  made  him  widely 
welcome.  In  these  earlier  days,  his  face  was  one  of 
strength  and  character,  rather  than  beauty;  but  as  he 


1 88  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

advanced  in  age,  Longfellow  mellowed  and  softened,  and 
was,  in  his  last  years,  with  his  crown  of  white  hair,  a  very 
handsome  and  stately  old  man. 

At  Cambridge,  Longfellow  had  rooms  in  Craigie  House 
on  the  beautiful  Brattle  Street.  Washington  had  used 
this  building  for  his  headquarters  when,  in  1775,  he  took 
charge  of  the  American  troops.  Later  in  the  poet's  life 
the  historic  house  came  into  his  possession  through  its 
purchase  by  the  father  of  his  second  wife,  Frances  Apple- 
ton,  whom  he  married  in  1843 ;  and  the  stately  colonial 
home  can  still  be  visited,  for,  by  the  courtesy  of  the  poet's 
daughter,  Miss  Alice  Longfellow,  on  certain  days  several 
of  the  rooms,  preserved  much  as  Longfellow  left  them,  are 
shown  to  those  who  apply  for  admission. 

The  tranquil  flow  of  these  Cambridge  days  was  vio 
lently  interrupted  by  a  domestic  tragedy,  —  Longfellow's 
loss  of  his  second  wife  by  fire.  While  she  was  seated  in 
the  next  room  to  him,  her  clothing  became  ignited  from 
a  lamp,  and  before  the  husband  could  rescue  her,  she  was 
burned  so  severely  as  to  die  the  following  day.  This  was 
in  1 86 1,  so  that  the  poet  passed  the  remaining  twenty  years 
of  his  life  without  the  dear  house-mate ;  consoled,  however, 
by  his  sons  and  daughters,  his  children  numbering  six,  — 
four  of  them  girls,  of  whom  one  was  early  taken.  All  the 
world  remembers  the  description  of 

Grave  Alice  and  laughing  Allegra 
And  Edith  with  golden  hair. 

Gradually  peace  came,  and  many  good  books  were  given 
to  the  world  after  this  sorrow,  beginning  with  the  "  Tales 
of  a  Wayside  Inn,"  —  one  of  his  deserved  successes  in 
narrative  verse. 


Longfellow  189 

There  was  another  European  trip  in  1868-1869,  and 
then  for  the  remainder  of  his  days,  Longfellow  led  a  quietly 
contented  and  charming  home  life  at  Craigie  House,  busy 
with  his  writings,  enlivened  by  a  social  circle  which  was 
as  choice  as  could  be  found  anywhere  in  the  world,  be 
loved  and  honored  at  home  and  abroad  as  few  men  have 
ever  been,  and  by  the  time  of  his  death,  after  a  brief 
illness  in  1882,  holding  a  place  in  the  popular  regard  such 
as  at  the  moment  no  other  American  poet  could  pretend 
to  approach.  Only  a  few  days  before,  he  had,  after  his 
kindly  fashion,  entertained  a  little  party  of  Boston  school 
boys  at  his  home ;  his  hold  on  the  children  has  always 
been  remarkable,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  so 
near  to  his  end  the  close  relation  was  symbolized  by  this 
incident.  Two  years  before  he  died,  Longfellow  Day  was 
established  in  the  Cincinnati  public  schools,  and  the  move 
ment  has  since  spread  fast  and  far  throughout  the  land. 
Such  action  speaks  volumes  for  the  really  vital  influence 
of  this  singer  upon  his  day  and  his  country.  His  work 
was  but  the  reflection  of  a  truly  good  life.  There  was  a 
double  fitness  in  the  epithet,  "  the  white  Mr.  Longfellow," 
applied  to  him  by  the  great  Norwegian  poet-statesman, 
Bjornson ;  for  that  life  was,  indeed,  stainless,  pure,  and 
high. 

As  Longfellow  brought  out  book  after  book  during  his 
long  career  (and  no  attempt  will  here  be  made  to  catalogue 
the  writings  of  so  voluminous  a  man,  whose  books  number 
some  thirty)  his  reputation  grew  slowly  but  steadily ;  his 
approach  to  fame  was  not,  like  Byron's,  at  a  bound,  but 
normal  and  sure.  So  late  as  1840,  when  he  was  thirty-five 
and  had  published  the  prose  "  Hyperion  "  and  the  book 
of  verse  "Voices  of  the  Night,"  as  well  as  several  other 


1 90  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

volumes,  the  income  from  his  writings  was  only  $214; 
but  by  1846  it  had  increased  to  $1800,  and  thereafter  the 
gain  was  constant.  By  the  time  he  was  fifty,  his  various 
works  were  selling  handsomely,  the  poetry,  led,  it  is  inter 
esting  to  note,  by  "  Hiawatha,"  of  which  fifty  thousand 
had  been  disposed  of,  out-selling  his  prose  romances  by 
three  or  four  to  one.  Just  as  Emerson's  natural  medium 
of  expression  was  prose,  so  was  verse  that  of  Longfellow. 
His  European  sketches  and  romances  in  prose,  "Outre 
Mer,"  "  Hyperion,"  and  his  New  England  story, 
"  Kavanagh,"  are  interesting  for  beauty  of  style,  purity 
and  warmth  of  sentiment,  and,  in  the  case  of  the  earlier 
two,  for  a  certain  young-man  poetry.  "  Hyperion  "  has 
an  interest  not  possessed  by  the  others  for  its  autobio 
graphical  flavor,  since  it  is  known  to  be  a  veiled  history 
of  the  poet's  own  experiences ;  and  it  did  a  service  in 
opening  up  to  American  readers  the  riches  of  German 
romance,  —  of  song,  story,  scenery,  and  life,  —  all  set  forth 
with  a  fervor  at  times  a  little  too  sentimental  for  taste 
to-day.  "  Hyperion "  is  a  storm  and  stress  document, 
Longfellow's  depiction  of  the  day  when  he  sought  the  blue 
flower  and  found  his  love.  The  translations  in  the  book 
were  a  foretaste  of  the  many  admirable  versions  of  the 
best  poetry  in  whatever  tongue,  which,  throughout  his  lit 
erary  career,  Longfellow  was  to  give  the  world,  —  thereby 
again  doing  great  service  in  the  popularizing  and  domesti 
cating  of  foreign  masters. 

But  the  poetry  must  receive  main  attention.  Longfellow 
wrote  much  verse  and  in  many  forms  ;  his  field  was  a  wide 
one  and  the  growths  therein  were  so  various  as  to  seem  to 
embrace  every  kind  of  poetic  flower.  A  thoughtful  survey 
of  the  large  body  of  his  works,  however,  will  show  that  he 


Longfellow  191 

was  primarily  a  lyric  poet;  a  singer  of  songs,  an  inter 
preter  of  the  elemental  emotions  of  common  humanity,  a 
bard  who  looked  into  his  own  heart  and  found  there  the 
inspiration  to  speak  for  others.  His  charming  little  poem 
"  The  Arrow  and  the  Song  "  conveys  this  idea:  — 

THE  ARROW  AND  THE  SONG 

I  shot  an  arrow  into  the  air, 
It  fell  to  earth,  I  knew  not  where ; 
For,  so  swiftly  it  flew,  the  sight 
Could  not  follow  it  in  its  flight. 

I  breathed  a  song  into  the  air, 
It  fell  to  earth,  I  knew  not  where ; 
For  who  has  sight  so  keen  and  strong, 
That  it  can  follow  the  flight  of  song? 

Long,  long  afterward,  in  an  oak 
I  found  the  arrow,  still  unbroke ; 
And  the  song,  from  beginning  to  end, 
I  found  again  in  the  heart  of  a  friend. 

The  song  reached  the  friend's  heart  because  it  came  from 
Longfellow's  own ;  and  the  heart  of  a  fellow  human  being 
is  a  target  at  which  the  true  poet  ever  aims.  Longfellow 
never  forgot  this.  A  lyric  poet  is  one  who  is  musical,  who 
is  charged  with  personal  emotion  and  with  a  message  of 
love  —  love  human  and  love  spiritual  —  and  so  reveals 
himself,  instead  of  hiding  behind  characters  and  objective 
events  as  does  the  dramatic  or  epic  poet.  But  in  calling 
Longfellow  thus  a  lyric  poet,  I  only  mean  that  a  large 
part  of  his  best  and  most  typical  work  was  lyric ;  the  word 
is  used  broadly  to  include  a  deal  of  fine  narrative  verse, 
rising  at  times  to  the  epic  quality  of  "  Evangeline  "  or 


192  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

"Hiawatha,"  and  hence  not  subjective  like  "The  Psalm 
of  Life  "  or  "  The  Children's  Hour." 

For  Longfellow  was  certainly  a  most  effective  and 
admirable  narrative  poet.  He  could  take  a  romantic  story, 
like  that  of  "  Evangeline,"  or  a  picturesque  historic  epi 
sode,  such  as  is  handled  in  "  The  Courtship  of  Miles 
Standish,"  and  tell  it  with  a  clear  charm  and  a  human 
touch  that  made  it  instantly  liked :  and  he  could  always 
turn  off  a  capital  ballad,  —  witness  "The  Skeleton  in 
Armour,"  "  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,"  and  a  score 
more.  We  are  told  that  five  thousand  copies  of  "  Miles 
Standish  "  were  sold  by  noon  of  the  first  day  of  its  publi 
cation  ;  in  London  ten  thousand,  —  this  last  an  extraordi 
nary  fact,  hardly  to  be  paralleled  in  American  literature. 
Longfellow  was  unique  among  our  poets  in  the  foreign 
vogue  he  won  ;  his  work  has  been  more  widely  copied  and 
translated  than  that  of  any  other  American  writer  save 
Mrs.  Stowe. 

Dramatic  in  his  work  he  is  not.  The  threefold  dra 
matic  poem,  "  Christus,"  of  which  the  central  part,  "  The 
Golden  Legend,"  is  the  best,  mellow  and  full  of  artistic 
quality  as  it  is,  cannot  be  called  the  masterpiece  it  would 
have  been,  if  Longfellow,  like  Browning  in  "  The  Ring 
and  the  Book,"  had  found  his  full  powers  in  such  efforts. 
The  charm  of  "  The  Spanish  Student "  is  that  of  lyric  color 
and  sound,  of  song  and  picture,  rather  than  of  dramatic 
story.  But  for  idyllic  narrative  and  for  that  of  more  epic 
dignity  and  proportion,  he  had  a  genuine  gift.  Since  it  is 
the  tendency  of  latter-day  criticism  to  refer  to  Longfellow 
as  a  writer  of  sweet,  simple  songs  and  little  more,  I  wish 
to  emphasize  this  side  of  his  power:  the  talent  for  sus 
tained  narrative  verse.  The  poet  who  is  simply  derivative, 


Longfellow  193 

an  ^Eolian  harp  played  upon  by  every  wind  that  blows, 
does  not  show  himself  a  pioneer  in  themes  and  forms : 
Longfellow  did  just  this.  He  had  the  poetic  instinct  to 
take  from  Nova  Scotia  the  pensively  lovely  tale  of 
"  Evangeline  "  and  make  that  dim  Acadian  folk  live  again 
with  all  the  pathos  of  the  loved  and  lost.  And  he  told  the 
story  in  the  melodious  hexameter,  practically  a  new  meter 
for  such  a  purpose,  —  and  in  so  doing  constituted  himself 
a  bold  innovator  as  to  form,  —  and  won  a  success  in  it 
which  has  never  been  duplicated.  The  handling  of  the 
hexameter  in  this  poem  (and  it  has  been  harshly  criticised 
from  Poe  to  Matthew  Arnold)  is  on  the  whole  a  triumph ; 
there  is  no  more  skillful  use  of  this  meter  applied  to  the 
purpose  of  real  story-telling  and  not  done  merely  as  a 
scholastic  exercise.  Goethe,  in  his  "  Hermann  and  Doro 
thea,"  an  hexameter  poem  of  like  idyllic  quality,  has 
hardly  been  more  successful.  The  student  is  earnestly 
besought  to  read  "  Evangeline  "  as  a  whole. 

In  the  same  spirit,  he  turned  later  to  the  Indian  for 
inspiration  (as  had  Cooper  so  long  before)  and  found 
another  fine  native  theme,  throwing  the  romantic  story 
of  another  race,  once  strong  and  proud  and  picturesque 
and  now  well-nigh  gone,  into  another  untried  meter,  and 
again  with  wonderfully  happy  results.  Everybody  now 
knows  that  the  meter  of  "  Hiawatha "  is  that  of  the 
Finnish  epic  "  Kalevala " ;  that  Longfellow  revived  it. 
But  that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  he  was  successful  in 
daring  to  introduce  this  unrhymed  form  of  verse  into  a 
language  where  rhyme  (outside  of  blank  verse)  was  a  hard 
and  fast  tradition.  It  is  only  justice  to  Longfellow  to  say 
that,  looking  at  him  as  an  artist  and  a  force  in  native 
letters,  these  are  major  achievements  ;  and  their  inexpug- 


194  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

nable  popularity  ever  since  they  were  introduced  seems  to 
me  to  be  an  evidence  of  a  sound  public  instinct  for  what 
is  really  representative. 

In  many  another  narrative  as  well,  heroic  or  homely, 
high  in  theme  or  lowly,  —  "The  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn" 
afford  a  notable  example,  —  did  Longfellow  exhibit  this 
gift  of  his  for  story-making.  He  was  eclectic  in  his 
subjects,  taking  them  from  anywhere  and  everywhere  (as 
did  Shakespeare  before  him),  but  the  question  in  such 
matters  is  not,  Where  did  you  get  it?  but  rather,  What 
have  you  done  with  it?  In  the  ballads,  where  lyric  flow 
and  an  attractive  handling  of  a  simple,  often  homely 
measure  must  combine  with  a  strong  human  interest,  in 
the  telling  of  some  story,  Longfellow  was  happy  again  and 
again.  "The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus"  may  be  read  as 
typical  of  many  in  this  class. 

On  that  side  of  lyric  poetry  which  is  gently  meditative 
or  gravely  philosophic  and  full  of  spiritual  message,  Long 
fellow  is  also  famous.  His  most-quoted  pieces  fall  here, 
and  poems  like  "A  Psalm  of  Life"  have  suffered  the 
penalty  attaching  always  to  literature  which,  because  of  a 
familiarity  beginning  in  the  schoolroom,  comes  to  be  hack 
neyed  and  parodied.  But  after  all,  such  a  fate  is  only 
granted  to  what  has  come  to  stay;  it  has  been  said  of 
great  men  that  after  they  are  caricatured  their  fame  is 
assured. 

In  the  poems  of  this  kind  Longfellow  has  a  tendency 
which  is  now  regarded  as  a  fault,  —  a  tendency,  let  me 
add,  shared  more  or  less  in  common  by  all  the  older  New 
England  bards.  I  refer  to  his  didacticism,  his  desire 
to  preach.  In  that  very  charming  piece,  "The  Village 
Blacksmith,"  for  example,  the  last  stanza  begins :  — 


Longfellow  195 

Thanks,  thanks  to  thee,  my  worthy  friend, 

For  the  lesson  thou  hast  taught. 

And  the  poet  then  goes  on  to  tell  what  the  lesson  is  and 
to  make,  a  little  heavily,  the  moral  application.  Few  will 
deny  that  in  poetical  quality  the  poem  suffers;  the  ethical 
good  of  it  was  all  received  before  the  moral  tag  had  been 
added.  And  along  with  this  moralizing  at  the  end  of  a 
poem,  goes  a  prosaic  commonplaceness  of  expression  which 
injures  the  verse.  The  invocatory  first  line  just  quoted  is 
not  the  language  of  poetry  at  all.  In  reply  to  this  criti 
cism,  it  may  be  said  that  much  of  Longfellow's  hold  on 
the  people  comes  from  this  frank  use  of  the  hortatory  and 
the  moralizing;  fifty  years  ago  it  was  not  objected  to  in 
poetry  as  it  is  to-day.  At  present  the  readers  of  verse 
prefer  to  get  their  obvious  instruction  from  the  pulpit,  and 
regard  the  stimulation  of  their  sense  of  beauty  as  the  main 
business  of  poetry.  Yet  often  Longfellow's  verse,  when 
such  is  his  aim,  takes  on  a  fine  dignity  and  an  increased 
width  and  depth  by  reason  of  this  purpose  of  his  to  teach 
and  lead.  The  question  finally  resolves  itself  into  this : 
Is  the  poet  while  preaching  still  the  poet,  —  that  is,  musi 
cal,  beautiful  in  word  and  form  ?  If  so,  the  more  moralism 
the  better.  Prosiness,  dullness,  and  lack  of  beauty  are 
the  three  cardinal  poetic  sins :  and  Longfellow  was  never 
guilty  of  them  all.  It  is  unusual  with  him  to  be  guilty  of 
any  of  them.  His  felicity  of  phrasing  is  almost  constant, 
and  his  capacity  for  music  was  so  well  in  hand  that  it 
rarely  forsook  him. 

Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  in  looking  at  the  many  facets 
of  this  poet's  jewels,  as  they  variously  shine  before  the 
reader's  eye,  that  luster  after  luster  is  the  result  of  the 
literary  culture  of  the  poet;  it  is  this  part  of  his  work,  to 


196  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

be  sure,  which  now  seems  to  us  less  original  and  hence 
less  important.  Yet  this  stimulus  often  called  out  Long 
fellow's  full  powers.  A  poem  like  "  The  Belfry  of  Bruges  " 
may  stand  for  an  example  of  the  successful  handling  of  a 
transatlantic  motive.  Longfellow  was  as  good  a  sonneteer 
as  we  have  produced,  and  in  this  Italian  form,  with  its 
definite  demands  of  rhyme  arrangement  and  rhythm  and 
twofold  parts,  he  wrought  some  of  the  loveliest  of  his 
fancies ;  the  fine  sonnet  on  Milton  is  one  such,  and  the 
really  splendid  series  on  the  cathedral,  that  "  medieval 
miracle  of  stone,"  furnishes  another.  The  first  mentioned 
may  follow :  — 

MILTON 

I  pace  the  sounding  sea-beach  and  behold 
How  the  voluminous  billows  roll  and  run, 
Upheaving  and  subsiding,  while  the  sun 
Shines  through  their  sheeted  emerald  far  unrolled, 

And  the  ninth  wave,  slow  gathering  fold  by  fold 
All  its  loose-flowing  garments  into  one, 
Plunges  upon  the  shore,  and  floods  the  dun 
Pale  reach  of  sands,  and  changes  them  to  gold. 

So  in  majestic  cadence  rise  and  fall 
The  mighty  undulations  of  thy  song, 
O  sightless  bard,  England's  Maeonides ! 

And  ever  and  anon,  high  over  all 

Uplifted,  a  ninth  wave  superb  and  strong, 
Floods  all  the  soul  with  its  melodious  seas. 

It  is  the  scholar-poet  again  who  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
"  Saga  of  King  Olaf  "  or  in  the  old  miracle  play  of  '•  The 
Golden  Legend  "  ;  but  in  Longfellow's  verse,  as  indeed  in 
the  whole  demesne  of  poetry  of  the  English  race,  the 
themes  which  have  inspired  to  creative  effort  have  been 


Longfellow  197 

in  large  measure  historical,  legendary,  and  bookish ;  the 
democratic  Muse  of  Whitman,  with  its  startling  homeliness 
and  modernity  of  subject,  does  not  exclude  the  possibility 
of  a  more  cultured  appeal.  It  is  a  mark  of  the  versatility 
of  Longfellow  that  he  could  with  such  success  write  both 
the  simple  lays  dear  to  the  general  public  and  produce 
the  larger  scholar-work  for  the  few ;  could  erect  the  hum 
ble  wayside  shrine  and  the  stately  cathedral  with  its 
glories  of  music,  decoration,  and  soaring  architectonics. 
Naturally  enough,  in  the  poetic  labor  of  his  latest  years, 
the  culture  themes  became  more  prominent.  The  titles 
of  late  books,  like  "  The  Masque  of  Pandora  "  and  "  Kera- 
mos,"  illustrate  the  fact. 

Closely  in  connection  with  this  cultured  and  scholarly 
aspect  of  Longfellow's  poetry  is  his  work  as  a  translator. 
All  things  considered,  he  did  more  and  better  work  in 
making  English  versions  from  good  foreign  literature  than 
any  other  literary  man  we  have  produced.  His  outgiving 
here  was  of  remarkable  range  and  variety.  When  well 
advanced  in  years  he  made  an  English  translation  of 
Dante's  "  Divine  Comedy,"  in  many  respects  admirable ; 
but  from  the  days  of  "  Outre  Mer  "  and  "  Hyperion  "  he 
was  constantly  turning  song,  ballad,  and  narrative  from 
foreign  sources  into  his  own  tongue.  Some  of  them,  like 
the  vastly  popular  song  "  Beware  "  or  the  lovely  "  Song  of 
the  Silent  Land,"  both  from  the  German,  seem  almost  as 
much  a  part  of  him  and  of  English  literature  as  his  original 
poems,  —  which  is  in  itself  a  tremendous  compliment. 
The  service  to  general  culture  in  America  thus  performed 
by  Longfellow  is  not  likely  to  be  overestimated  ;  when  he 
began  to  translate  from  other  languages,  the  common 
knowledge  of  foreign  literature  which  now  exists  had 


198  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

hardly  begun ;  viewed  thus,  his  work  as  a  translator, 
though  not  so  demonstrative  of  his  individual  talent,  is 
an  important  side  of  the  good  he  did  as  a  literary  man. 
Every  literary  worker  knows  the  immense  and  thankless 
difficulty  of  producing  good  translations;  nothing  is  rarer 
than  a  really  conspicuous  talent  for  it.  Such  a  talent 
Longfellow  certainly  possessed. 

But  when  full  acknowledgments  have  been  made  of 
Longfellow's  powers  in  these  various  fields  of  accomplish 
ment,  it  remains  true  that  the  great  majority  of  readers 
persist  in  loving  him  for  his  simple  lyrics  —  "some  simple 
and  heartfelt  lay" — which  have  a  homely  fashion  of 
creeping  into  the  universal  heart :  such  are  "The  Day 
is  Done,"  "The  Bridge,"  "The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs," 
—  how  the  names  throng  in.  Let  us  have  two  such,  to  re 
read  which  is,  for  most  of  us,  to  meet  old,  dear  friends. 

THE  BRIDGE 

I  stood  on  the  bridge  at  midnight, 
As  the  clocks  were  striking  the  hour, 

And  the  moon  rose  o'er  the  city, 
Behind  the  dark  church-tower. 

I  saw  her  bright  reflection 

In  the  waters  under  me, 
Like  a  golden  goblet  falling 

And  sinking  into  the  sea. 

And  far  in  the  hazy  distance 

Of  that  lovely  night  in  June, 
The  blaze  of  the  flaming  furnace 

Gleamed  redder  than  the  moon. 


Longfellow  199 

Among  the  long,  black  rafters 

The  wavering  shadows  lay, 
And  the  current  that  came  from  the  ocean 

Seemed  to  lift  and  bear  them  away; 

As,  sweeping  and  eddying  through  them, 

Rose  the  belated  tide, 
And,  streaming  into  the  moonlight, 

The  seaweed  floated  wide. 

And  like  those  waters  rushing 

Among  the  wooden  piers, 
A  flood  of  thoughts  came  o'er  me^ 

That  rilled  my  eyes  with  tears. 

How  often,  oh  how  often, 

In  the  days  that  had  gone  by, 
I  had  stood  on  that  bridge  at  midnight 

And  gazed  on  that  wave  and  sky ! 

How  often,  oh  how  often, 

I  had  wished  that  the  ebbing  tide 
Would  bear  me  away  on  its  bosom 

O'er  the  ocean  wild  and  wide ! 

For  my  heart  was  hot  and  restless, 

And  my  life  was  full  of  care, 
And  the  burden  laid  upon  me 

Seemed  greater  than  I  could  bear. 

Ifcit  now  it  has  fallen  from  me, 

It  is  buried  in  the  sea; 
And  only  the  sorrow  of  others 

Throws  its  shadow  over  me. 

Yet  whenever  I  cross  the  river 

On  its  bridge  with  wooden  piers, 
Like  the  odor  of  brine  from  the  ocean 

Comes  the  thought  of  other  years. 


2OO  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

And  I  think  how  many  thousands 
Of  care-encumbered  men, 

Each  bearing  his  burden  of  sorrow, 
Have  crossed  the  bridge  since  then. 

I  see  the  long  procession 
Still  passing  to  and  fro, 

The  young  heart  hot  and  restless, 
And  the  old  subdued  and  slow! 

And  forever  and  forever, 
As  long  as  the  river  flows, 

As  long  as  the  heart  has  passions, 
As  long  as  life  has  woes  ; 

The  moon  and  its  broken  reflection 
And  its  shadows  shall  appear, 

As  the  symbol  of  love  in  heaven, 
And  its  wavering  image  here. 


THE  DAY  IS  DONE 

The  day  is  done,  and  the  darkness 
Falls  from  the  wings  of  Night, 

As  a  feather  is  wafted  downward 
From  an  eagle  in  his  flight. 

I  see  the  lights  of  the  village 

Gleam  through  the  rain  and  the  mist, 
And  a  feeling  of  sadness  comes  o'er  me 

That  my  soul  cannot  resist : 

A  feeling  of  sadness  and  longing 

That  is  not  akin  to  pain, 
And  resembles  sorrow  only 

As  the  mist  resembles  the  rain. 

Come,  read  to  me  some  poem, 
Some  simple  and  heartfelt  lay, 


Longfellow  201 

That  shall  soothe  this  restless  feeling, 
And  banish  the  thoughts  of  day. 

Not  from  the  grand  old  masters, 

Not  from  the  bards  sublime, 
Whose  distant  footsteps  echo 

Through  the  corridors  of  Time. 

For,  like  strains  of  martial  music, 

Their  mighty  thoughts  suggest 
Life's  endless  toil  and  endeavor ; 

And  to-night  I  long  for  rest. 

Read  from  some  humbler  poet, 
Whose  songs  gushed  from  his  heart, 

As  showers  from  the  clouds  of  summer, 
Or  tears  from  the  eyelids  start ; 

Who,  through  long  days  of  labor, 

And  nights  devoid  of  ease, 
Still  heard  in  his  soul  the  music 

Of  wonderful  melodies. 

Such  songs  have  power  to  quiet 

The  restless  pulse  of  care, 
And  come  like  the  benediction 

That  follows  after  prayer. 

Then  read  from  the  treasured  volume 

The  poem  of  thy  choice, 
And  lend  to  the  rhyme  of  the  poet 

The  beauty  of  thy  voice. 

And  the  night  shall  be  filled  with  music, 
And  the  cares,  that  infest  the  day, 

Shall  fold  their  tents,  like  the  Arabs, 
And  as  silently  steal  away. 

In  a  fine  sonnet  on  Tennyson,  Longfellow  addressed 
him  as  the  "sweet  historian  of  the  heart";  the  line  may 
most  aptly  be  fitted  to  himself.  It  is  because  he  does 


2O2  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

interpret  the  best  instincts  of  the  emotional  life  of  average 
men  and  women  with  simplicity,  felicity,  and  truth,  that 
he  will  long  be  cherished;  and  it  is  when  he  in  like  man 
ner  interprets  the  fundamental  human  needs  and  aspira 
tions  in  the  framework  of  a  narrative  like  "Evangeline" 
that  he  performs  the  same  service  in  his  longer  poems. 
There  is  no  particular  demerit  in  making  yourself  under 
stood  in  verse  by  the  so-called  general  reader,  although 
some  very  precious  messages  may  be  more  subtle  and 
more  uniquely  expressed.  If  Longfellow  is  not  strikingly 
original,  not  dynamically  great  like  Browning,  or  if  the 
magic  touch  of  a  Poe  is  denied  him,  the  good  he  did  will 
match  either  of  them.  One  thing  he  certainly  was :  a 
master  in  verse,  an  artist  of  literary  expression.  And 
while  conceding  that  he  was  not  a  profound  thinker,  one 
may  not  hesitate  to  ask  if  it  is  the  first  business  of  the 
poet  to  be  a  profound  thinker;  if  he  have  not  done  his 
duty  when  by  the  charm  of  form  and  of  music  he  revivifies 
what  is  a  common  property  until  it  seem  new  and  precious. 

Longfellow,  for  all  his  writing  days,  worked  with  high 
purpose  and  patient  toil  at  his  craft.  He  believed  in  the 
poetic  function,  he  took  his  task  seriously.  He  polished 
his  works  as  every  good  workman  should;  but  once  it  was 
given  to  the  world,  he  did  not  fuss  over  it  nor  pother  over 
the  minute  changes  which  make  life  miserable  for  the 
editors  of  some  bards.  His  devotion  to  his  art  had  in 
it  something  of  religious  consecration.  He  knew  that 
poetry  when  it  was  true  to  itself  had  as  lofty  a  mission  as 
any  utterance  of  man. 

When  the  American  who  is  in  London  steps  into  West 
minster  Abbey  —  that  splendid  mausoleum  of  the  worthy 
dead  of  a  dominant  race  —  nothing  in  the  Poets'  Corner 


Longfellow  203 

thrills  him  more,  if  I  may  here  express  my  own  experience, 
than  to  behold  the  marble  bust  of  Longfellow,  the  only 
memorial  to  a  maker  of  American  literature  in  that  his 
toric  place.  By  general  consent  and  the  acclaim  of  two 
sister  peoples  he  was  selected  as  the  bard  to  represent  us 
there. 

The  choice  is  a  significant  commentary  upon  the  nature 
of  Longfellow's  fame  at  the  time  of  his  death.  It  did 
not  mean  that  English  critical  opinion  would  necessarily 
accord  to  him  the  laurels  in  American  song.  But  it  did 
express  the  feeling  that  the  poet  had  entered  into  the 
general  current  of  literature  abroad  and  become  more 
widely  influential  than  any  other  American.  Hence  was 
his  name  most  fittingly  inscribed  where  men  who  have 
used  the  English  speech  with  power  and  beauty  and  to 
purposes  of  good  are  remembered  by  their  own  people. 
Longfellow  had  become  a  link  in  the  chain  which  binds 
us  to  our  kinsmen  across  the  water;  and  as,  gravely  lovely 
in  the  sculptured  stone,  he  looks  down  upon  a  visitor  to 
the  great  church  so  full  of  reverberations  of  the  mighty 
past,  his  lips  would  seem  to  say :  "  Lo,  we  who  make  beauty 
in  song  and  story  are  the  true  bringers-in  of  peace;  since 
all  mankind  may  be  knit  together  by  the  bond  of  beautiful 
words  and  in  the  broad  brotherhood  of  noble  thoguhts." 


CHAPTER  IX 

HOLMES 

IT  is  hard  to  realize  that  in  the  same  year,  1809,  which 
gave  birth  to  Poe,  who  already  seems  so  far  back  in  our 
literary  history,  dying  as  he  did  before  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  was  born, 
whose  slight,  alert  figure  was  only  yesterday  pacing  the 
streets  of  Boston. 

Dr.  Holmes,  like  Bryant,  was  an  octogenarian  and  saw 
with  the  keenest  interest  and  with  none  of  the  old-age 
conservative  horror  in  change,  a  veritable  revolution  in 
scientific  and  religious  thought,  —  indeed,  became  himself 
a  spokesman  of  the  new  truth.  He  never  grew  old,  —  he 
was  eighty  years  young,  as  somebody  said  of  him.  The 
work  he  did  in  prose  and  verse  took  the  impress,  of  the 
finely  mundane  quality  of  his  genius  and  made  him|always 
a  man  of  his  time,  interpreting  with  wit  and  wisdom  the 
meaning  of  modern  social  life.  )  It  was  by  his  sunny  gift 
for  social  interpretation  that  he  won  his  large  audience 
and  will  live. 

Following  what  may  be  called  the  rule  of  our  New 
England  writers,  Holmes  came  of  clerical  stock,  his  father 
being  a  Congregational  minister  of  Cambridge,  Oliver's 
birthplace.  His  mother  was  a  Wendell,  —  as  the  name 
implies,  of  Dutch  descent,  but  also  deriving  from  the 
colonial  Bradstreets,  thus  connecting  him  with  Anne  Brad- 

204 


Holmes  205 

street,  the  colonial  poetess.  The  Holmeses  settled  in 
Woodstock,  Connecticut,  in  the  late  seventeenth  century, 
but  soon  came  to  Massachusetts.  Dr.  Holmes  (the  title  is 
universally  used  in  a  sort  of  affectionate  recognition  of 
his  gentle  autocracy)  referred  to  himself  as  of  the  "  Brah 
min  caste  "  of  New  England ;  he  was  indeed  of  its  best, 
and  well  did  he  maintain  its  ideal  of  intellectual  cultiva 
tion  and  moral  worth. 

The  peculiar  vivacity  always  characteristic  of  Holmes, 
as  well  as  his  small  stature,  seems  to  have  come  from  his 
mother,  whose  diminutive  figure  and  lively  manners  are 
described  by  the  biographer.  Holmes,  after  attendance 
at  the  Cambridgeport  Academy,  where  his  fellow-pupils 
included  Margaret  Fuller  and  R.  H.  Dana,  the  novelist  of 
the  sea,  went  to  Andover  Academy  when  he  was  fifteen  for 
his  college  preparation.  It  was  a  matter  of  course  that  a 
Cambridge  clergyman  should  send  his  boy  to  Harvard, 
and  thither  Wendell  dutifully  fared  in  1825,  and  four  years 
later  was  graduated.  As  a  young  boy  he  had  evinced  a 
vivid  interest  in  books  and  begun  to  rhyme  ;  the  rhyming 
tendency  was  in  the  immediate  family,  since  his  father  was 
at  least  a  respectable  author  in  verse.  In  every  college 
class  there  is  some  fellow  who  has  sufficient  mastery  in 
metrical  writing,  if  not  genuine  poetic  call,  to  be  elected 
class  poet.  There  were  two  such  in  the  Harvard  class  of 
'29  ;  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  and  James  Freeman  Clarke, 
and  the  former  was  chosen  as  its  representative.  In  the 
class,  too,  was  S.  F.  Smith,  author  of  the  famous  patriotic 
hymn,  "  America  " ;  but  as  he  did  not  apparently  contest 
for  the  position,  it  would  appear  that  his  poetic  promise 
had  not  been  revealed.  This  class  poem  by  Holmes  was 
the  beginning  of  the  long  series  of  verses  for  all  sorts  of 


206  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

college  occasions,  which  for  a  generation  flowed  from  the 
ready  pen  and  readier  wit  of  the  genial  Doctor. 

A  year  of  law  study  at  the  Harvard  Law  School  fol 
lowed  the  undergraduate  course.  When  in  doubt,  try  law, 
might  be  named  as  the  regular  principle  of  the  literary 
aspirant.  But  this  one  year  was  sufficient  to  deflect  him 
to  the  study  of  medicine,  and  he  passed  two  years  in 
Boston  working  at  this  profession,  and  then  went  abroad 
to  carry  on  his  studies,  with  headquarters  in  Paris,  where 
he  had  the  advantage  of  lectures  by  famous  specialists. 
During  the  years  thus  spent  he  also  made  trips  to  Eng 
land,  Germany,  and  Italy.  By  1836  he  had  his  M.D. 
degree  and  began  to  practice  in  Boston.  Young  physi 
cians  are  not  in  the  habit  of  doing  a  large  business  at 
once,  and  Dr.  Holmes  was  no  exception ;  in  fact,  his 
professional  success  as  a  practitioner  was  never  a  thing  to 
boast  of,  his  laurels  being  rather  those  of  a  teacher  and 
investigator.  He  became  Professor  of  Anatomy  in  Dart 
mouth  College  in  1839  at  the  age  of  thirty,  held  it  for  a 
year,  and  in  1847  was  given  the  same  chair  at  Harvard, 
being  also  elected  dean;  and  here  his  service  covered 
thirty-five  years.  His  medical  papers  were  of  genuine 
ability  and  as  a  teacher  he  was  brilliant.  It  has  been 
suggested  that  perhaps  the  fact  that  he  was  a  wit  and  a 
literary  man  may  have  prevented  his  private  practice  from 
growing ;  people  like  a  doctor  to  stick  strictly  to  business, 
they  tolerate  a  quack  before  a  wag.  Holmes  made  merry 
over  his  small  practice  and  declared  that  the  smallest 
fevers  would  be  gratefully  received;  but  as  a  college 
lecturer  his  humor  and  happy  power  of  presentation  made 
him  vastly  popular,  and  he  won  the  enviable  reputation  of 
being  the  only  man  who,  late  in  a  day  of  many  recitations, 


Holmes  207 

could  hold  the  attention  of  a  collegiate  audience.  In  the 
year  he  left  Dartmouth  he  married  Miss  Amelia  L.  Jackson, 
and  on  coming  to  Boston  took  up  a  life  full  of  cultivated 
social  opportunities  and  a  broadening  culture. 

The  years  slipped  by,  and  Holmes  was  getting  well 
along  in  years  without  really  showing  his  hand  in  litera 
ture.  He  was  known  socially  as  a  wit,  raconteur,  and 
general  good  fellow;  he  was  a  clever,  graceful,  occasional 
poet;  and  he  was  a  successful  scholar  in  his  chosen  field; 
but,  when  he  was  past  forty-five  years  of  age,  he  had  no 
broad  literary  reputation,  nor  was  he  primarily  regarded  as 
a  man  of  letters.  In  1857  something  occurred  which 
changed  all  this :  the  Atlantic  Monthly  had  been  founded 
in  this  year  and  Lowell  had  accepted  the  editorship,  and 
only  done  so  on  the  condition  that  Dr.  Holmes  should 
be  his  first  contributor.  When  Holmes  was  called  upon 
for  the  contribution,  he  bethought  him  of  two  papers 
which  he  had  published  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  in 
the  New  England  Magazine.  He  began  to  furbish  these 
papers  up  and  to  extend  them ;  during  the  years  1857  to 
1858  appeared  serially  in  the  Atlantic  "The  Autocrat  of 
the  Breakfast  Table";  and  the  medical  lecturer,  the  local 
wit,  became  a  literary  man  of  national  reputation.  Looked 
back  upon,  it  almost  seems  like  a  happy  fluke.  Dr. 
Holmes  himself  declared  that  Lowell,  by  urging  him  to 
contribute  to  the  Atlantic,  woke  him  "from  a  kind  of  liter 
ary  lethargy  in  which  I  was  half  slumbering." 

The  remainder  of  his  life  was  a  succession  of  literary 
successes,  of  widening  reputation,  of  larger  social  contact, 
and  of  recognition  on  all  sides  and  in  every  way.  The 
trilogy  of  the  Breakfast  Table  was  completed  by  the 
"Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table"  in  1859  and  "The 


208  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table  "  in  1872,  both  of  them  appear 
ing  in  the  Atlantic.  Two  notable  pieces  of  fiction,  "  Elsie 
Venner,"  in  1861,  and  "The  Guardian  Angel,"  in  1867, 
were  also  serials  in  the  Atlantic,  to  which  Holmes 's  crea 
tive  work  went  first,  as  a  matter  of  course.  He  wrote  a 
memoir  of  Motley  in  1878,  and  the  life  of  Emerson  in  the 
"American  Men  of  Letters"  series  in  1884.  "A  Mortal 
Antipathy"  dates  from  1885,  and  two  delightful  old-age 
books  of  essays,  "Over  the  Tea-cups"  in  1890  (a  fourth 
book  to  go  with  the  Autocrat  series)  and  "  Our  Hundred 
Days  in  Europe  "  in  1887,  declared  that  the  charm  of  the 
essayist  was  little  weakened  by  the  fact  that  he  was  past 
the  psalmist's  allotment  of  life.  Dr.  Holmes  visited  Eu 
rope  in  1886  and  the  last-mentioned  book  was  the  direct 
and  charming  outcome  of  this  experience,  while  in  his  Tea 
cup  chats  he  treated  the  fact  of  old  age  in  a  charming 
vein  of  gentle  humor  and  delicate  pathos.  He  was  given 
the  Harvard  LL.D.  in  1880  and  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Letters  from  Cambridge,  and  D.C.L.  from  Oxford.  His 
closing  years  were  peaceful,  honored  and  full  of  a  calm  en 
joyment.  Not  only  honor  but  affection  was  his  in  unusual 
measure.  He  divided  his  year  between  his  Beacon  Street 
house  in  Boston  and  his  beautiful  summer  residence  at  Bev 
erly  Farms ;  and  he  passed  away  in  the  mid-autumn  of  1894. 
So  long  had  he  lived  that  he  was  well-nigh  the  "  last  leaf 
upon  the  tree":  Longfellow,  Emerson,  Lowell,  and  Whittier 
had  gone,  —  the  Quaker  poet  but  two  years  before.  His 
classmates  of  the  famous  class  of  '29,  for  whose  meetings 
he  had  written  many  a  sprightly  verse,  had  been  reduced 
until  he  was  almost  the  sole  survivor.  The  evenings  at 
the  famous  dinners  of  the  Saturday  Club  in  Boston, 
when  his  sparkling  wit  was  relished  by  a  full  circle  of 


Holmes  209 

companion  wits,  savants,  and  poets,  were  very  far  behind. 
Holmes  clung  almost  pathetically  to  life  and  took  a  sort  of 
scientific  interest  in  seeing  how  long  by  a  proper  care  of  his 
body  he  could  survive  ;  but  after  all,  deep  in  his  heart  he 
must  have  been  well  content  to  go. 

'The  versatility  of  Dr.  Holmes  is  perhaps  what  one 
first  thinks  of  in  reviewing  his  work  and  trying  to  under 
stand  his  place  in  our  literature.  To  begin  with,  he  was 
socially  a  remarkable  figure,  and  his  position  in  Boston  for 
more  than  a  generation,  unique.  In  a  sense  he  seemed  its 
genius  loci  —  expressive  of  what  it  stood  for  in  the  way  of 
social  breeding,  grace,  and  distinction.  He  was  a  wonder 
ful  talker ;  not  a  formal  conversationalist  like  Alcott,  who 
harangued  while  the  silent  circle  listened,  almost  hypno 
tized  by  the  unceasing  flow  {  but  a  man  who  also  listened 
well,  who  stimulated  others,  and  who  made  a  drawing-room  / 
scintillant  with  his  epigrams,  while  his  bons  mots  were  a 
part  of  the  best  traditions  of  the  famous  Puritan  city. 
Holmes  made  puns,  and  justified  them  by  their  cleverness 
—  in  itself  a  real  achievement.  )  George  William  Curtis 
has  compared  his  conversation  to  a  "humming  bird  supping 
the  one  honeyed  drop  from  every  flower."  It  may  not 
have  been  he  who  declared  that  the  typical  Boston  person 
is  the  east  wind  made  flesh ;  but  it  should  have  been,  for 
it  sounds  like  him.  His  readiness  on  an  occasion  was 
proverbial.  At  the  time  when  he  was  delivering  the 
Lowell  lectures  in  a  down-town  hall  in  Boston,  there  was  a 
custodian  whose  business  it  was  to  see  to  it  that  the 
speaker  did  not  run  over  the  allotted  time  of  an  hour. 
The  gentle  hint  he  gave  was  to  appear  at  the  end  of  the 
hour  for  the  purpose  of  closing  the  doors.  Dr.  Holmes 
was  under  full  steam  in  a  talk  about  Walter  Scott,  and  the 
p 


2io  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

audience  hung  on  his  words.  But  the  hour  was  up  and 
the  guardian  came  into  sight  at  the  rear  of  the  hall. 
Holmes  stopped  abruptly,  clapped  his  hands,  and  vented 
this  impromptu  couplet,  which,  it  will  be  observed,  is  quite 
in  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  Sir  Walter's  poetry  upon  which 
he  had  been  dilating  :  — 

'Tis  time  that  the  portcullis  fall ; 
The  warder  waits  to  close  the  hall. ' 

The  audience  saw  the  point,  and  burst  into  laughter  and 
applause.  This  anecdote,  by  the  way,  has  never  before 
been  in  print. 

And  this  sparkle  of  talk  which  Dr.  Holmes  gave  forth 
with  such  delightful  spontaneity  in  society,  got  into  his 
verse  and  his  essays,  and  particularly  into  the  latter ;  he 
could  talk  in  print  as  well  as  in  society,  — I  his  Autocrat 
papers  were  a  sort  of  inspired  chat}  "What  do  I  mean  by 
the  real  talkers?"  he  queries  therein;  "why,  the  people 
with  fresh  ideas,  of  course,  and  plenty  of  good  warm  words 
to  dress  them  in."  Holmes  had  both  the  ideas  and  the 
happy  idiom  in  which  to  express  them.  And  moreover, 
Bostonese  to  the  finger-tips,  his  very  sense  of  humor  saved 
him  from  what  is  perhaps  that  city's  subtlest  danger  :  tak 
ing  himself  and  the  town  too  seriously.  To  a  lady  who 
spoke  admiringly  to  him  of  his  famous  definition  of  Bos 
ton  as  the  Hub  of  the  Universe,  he  replied:  "And  the 
best  of  it  is,  you  don't  see  the  joke."  "What  do  you 
mean  ?  "  "  That  we  believe  it,"  twinkled  the  doctor.  Was 
there  ever  a  keener  satire?  There  was  a  frankness  about 
him  which  showed  itself  in  a  kind  of  naive  appreciation  of 
his  own  powers,  entirely  harmless  and  inoffensive.  He 
liked  to  be  told  that  his  poems  were  beautiful,  he  liked 


Holmes  211 

to  read  them  to  admiring  listeners.  But  there  was  abso 
lutely  nothing  of  the  egoist,  in  the  unpleasant  sense,  in 
him. 

(Holmes,  then,  was  a  humorist,  and  no  study  of  Ameri 
can  humor  can  omit  his  name.  His  fun  was  that  of  the 
fine  gentleman  and  appealed  equally  to  the  head  and  the 
heart.  He  had  wit,  that  intellectual  quality  which  sees 
incongruities  and  expresses  them  in  such  apt  terms  of 
language  that  a  keen,  mental  delight  follows ;  but  quite 
as  truly,  he  had  that  atmospheric  quality  of  humor  which 
rests  upon  kindliness,  exhibits  temperament,  and  is  so 
close  akin  to  pathos  that  often  the  two  blend,  as  does  an 
April  day  of  sun  and  shower.  In  the  second  book  of  the 
Autocrat  series,  wherein  the  Professor  is  the  speaker, 
the  Story  of  Iris,  embedded  like  a  precious  stone  in  the 
lighter  satire  of  the  book,  is  a  tenderly  pathetic  love- 
romance  and  a  fine  example  of  the  underlying  emotional 
seriousness  of  the  author,  as  many  of  his  passages  which 
grapple  with  some  serious  topic  of  the  day  are  of  his 
equally  serious  intellectual  position, 

Dr.  Holmes's  greatest  ambition  was  to  be  a  poet.  Yet 
his  achievements  in  prose,  on  the  whole,  outweigh  what 
he  did  in  verse,  familiar  and  well  loved  as  are  certain 
of  his  lyrics.  He  will  be  longest  remembered  as  an 
essayist.  His  writing  life  may  be  divided  into  two  parts 
of  which  1857,  the  year  of  the  founding  of  the  Atlantic,  is 
the  line  of  separation.  Before  that  date  he  wrote  most  of 
his  poems,  and  the  best  of  them ;  afterwards  came  his 
prose  triumphs.  Fully  one-half  of  all  Dr.  Holmes's  metri 
cal  writing  consisted  of  that  composed  for  some  occasion, 
—  a  dinner,  a  birthday,  a  college  reunion,  or  a  funeral,  — 
no  man  of  his  time  had  his  felicity  for  such  things.  But, 


212  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

from  its  very  nature,  comparatively  little  of  this  could 
remain ;  such  verse  is  inevitably  so  special  in  its  applica 
tion  and  so  local  that  it  cannot  abide.  That  a  few  such 
pieces  are  still  quoted,  and  to  be  found  in  collections,  only 
testifies  to  Dr.  Holmes 's  exceptional  gift  in  this  field. 

But  entirely  aside  from  these  poems  of  occasion, 
Holmes  produced  a  few  lyrics  which  have  taken  a  firm 
place  in  popular  regard ;  and  they  are  of  several  kinds. 
One  of  them  is  the  light  verse  —  almost  what  the  French 
call  vers  societe  —  of  which  "The  Last  Leaf"  is  an  ex 
quisite  and  perfect  example,  with  its  delicate  interplay  of 
pathos  and  humor,  its  quaint  suggestion  of  eighteenth- 
century  old-fashioned  gentility,  —  like  a  Watteau  picture 
or  a  minuet  danced  in  powdered  wigs  and  knee  breeches. 

THE  LAST  LEAF 

I  saw  him  once  before, 
As  he  passed  by  the  door, 

And  again 

The  pavement  stones  resound, 
As  he  totters  o'er  the  ground 

With  his  cane. 

They  say  that  in  his  prime, 
Ere  the  pruning-knife  of  Time 

Cut  him  down, 
Not  a  better  man  was  found 
By  the  Crier  on  his  round 

Through  the  town. 

But  now  he  walks  the  streets, 
And  he  looks  at  all  he  meets 

Sad  and  wan, 

And  he  shakes  his  feeble  head, 
That  it  seems  as  if  he  said, 

"  They  are  gone." 


Holmes  213 

The  mossy  marbles  rest 
On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In  their  bloom, 

And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb. 

My  grandmamma  has  said  — 
Poor  old  lady,  she  is  dead 

Long  ago  — 

That  he  had  a  Roman  nose, 
And  his  cheek  was  like  a  rose 

In  the  snow ; 

But  now  his  nose  is  thin, 
And  it  rests  upon  his  chin 

Like  a  staff, 

And  a  crook  is  in  his  back, 
And  a  melancholy  crack 

In  his  laugh. 

I  know  it  is  a  sin 
For  me  to  sit  and  grin 

At  him  here ; 

But  the  old  three-cornered  hat, 
And  the  breeches,  and  all  that, 

Are  so  queer ! 

And  if  I  should  live  to  be 
The  last  leaf  upon  the  tree 

In  the  spring, 

Let  them  smile,  as  I  do  now, 
At  the  old  forsaken  bough 

Where  I  cling. 

That  Holmes  could,  like  his  fellow-poets  of  New  Eng 
land,  strike  a  clear  and  stirring  note  of  patriotism,  is  well 
exemplified  by  "  Old  Ironsides,"  —  one  of  the  lyrics  that  is 


214  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

more  effective  in  influencing  public  opinion  than  a  legis 
lative  act. 

Holmes  also  wrote  a  number  of  pieces  in  which  he  used 
homely  New  England  subjects,  as  did  Lowell  in  the  "  Big- 
low  Papers,"  and  of  these  none  is  better  known  and  liked 
than  "The  Deacon's  Masterpiece,"  wherein  that  one-hoss 
shay,  dear  to  us  all  from  childhood,  is  limned  once  and 
forever.  So  familiar  is  this  deliciously  humorous  and 
characteristic  lyric  that  it  hardly  needs  quoting  here.  It 
will  be  better  to  give  room  to  a  poem  in  which  Dr.  Holmes 
showed  that  he  could  rise  to  a  very  noble  height  when 
writing  a  serious  lyric  in  the  best  traditions  of  English 
poetry.  I  refer  to  "The  Chambered  Nautilus,"  perhaps 
of  all  his  poetry  that  one  which  his  judicious  admirers 
would  choose  from  the  large  body  of  his  metrical  work. 

THE   CHAMBERED   NAUTILUS 

This  is  the  ship  of  pearl,  which,  poets  feign, 

Sails  the  unshadowed  main,  — 

The  venturous  bark  that  flings 
On  the  sweet  summer  wind  its  purpled  wings 
In  gulfs  enchanted,  where  the  Siren  sings, 

And  coral  reefs  lie  bare, 
Where  the  cold  sea-maids  rise  to  sun  their  streaming  hair. 

Its  webs  of  living  gauze  no  more  unfurl ; 

Wrecked  is  the  ship  of  pearl ! 

And  every  chambered  cell, 
Where  its  dim  dreaming  life  was  wont  to  dwell, 
As  the  frail  tenant  shaped  his  growing  shell, 

Before  thee  lies  revealed, — 
Its  irised  ceiling  rent,  its  sunless  crypt  unsealed ! 

Year  after  year  beheld  the  silent  toil 
That  spread  his  lustrous  coil ; 


Holmes  215 

Still,  as  the  spiral  grew, 
He  left  the  past  year's  dwelling  for  the  new, 
Stole  with  soft  step  its  shining  archway  through, 

Built  up  its  idle  door, 
Stretched  in  his  last-found  home,  and  knew  the  old  no  more. 

Thanks  for  the  heavenly  message  brought  by  thee, 

Child  of  the  wandering  sea, 

Cast  from  her  lap,  forlorn ! 
From  thy  dead  lips  a  clearer  note  is  born 
Than  ever  Triton  blew  from  wreathed  horn! 

While  on  my  ear  it  rings, 
Through  the  deep  caves  of  thought  I  hear  a  voice  that  sings : — 

Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 

As  the  swift  seasons  roll ! 

Leave  thy  low- vaulted  past ! 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last, 
Shut  thee  from  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast, 
'       Till  thou  at  length  art  free, 
Leaving  thine  outgrown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea ! 

Much  of  his  best  verse,  which  is  now  to  be  found  in  the 
collected  editions  of  his  poems,  was  originally  thrown  off 
in  connection  with  the  Autocrat  papers,  and  it  is  one  of 
the  pleasant  experiences  of  reading  his  essays  to  find  some 
favorite  lyric  hidden  there.  In  all  his  verse  one  may  note 
a  certain  old-fashioned  quality  as  to  meter  and  manner  of 
phrasing.  Holmes  always  admired  Pope,  and  Pope's 
influence  can  be  seen  in  him.  The  freer  movement  and 
the  wider  lyric  utterance  of  the  greatest  contemporary 
poets  are  not  as  a  rule  to  be  found  in  his  work.  Had  he 
left  nothing  but  verse,  he  would  have  been  regarded  as  a 
graceful,  charming  poet,  a  few  of  whose  lyrics  well  deserve 
to  survive ;  but  not  a  writer  to  take  his  place  side  by  side 
with  Poe  and  Emerson,  or  with  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and 


216  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Lowell.  Neither  the  range  nor  the  quality  of  his  work, 
viewed  as  a  whole,  would  have  justified  it.  As  we  have 
said,  it  is  a  certain  aspect  of  his  prose  that  has  put  him 
where  he  is. 

For  Holmes  was  an  essayist  of  very  high  quality,  with 
a  distinction  all  his  own ;  and  without  for  a  moment  de 
preciating  his  work  in  other  fields,  it  is  here  that  he  has 
most  significance  for  American  literature.  (  He  was  not 
X\  only  a  man  of  wit  and  elegance  but  a  genuine  thinker,  too, 
*  dowered  with  such  a  gift  for  statement  and  illustration 
that  his  wisdom  seems  like  wit.  ',  Holmes  was,  in  his  Auto 
crat  series,  a  genuine  intellectual  leader,  letting  in  upon 
musty  and  narrow  conventions  —  social,  scientific,  reli 
gious,  political,  or  whatever  —  the  clear,  dry,  vivifying 
sunlight  of  a  fine  intellect  and  a  tolerant  nature.  He 
pierced  the  shams  of  medicine,  he  heralded  the  new  dis 
coveries  of  science  in  all  directions,  he  pointed  out  the 
difference  between  a  real  spiritual  condition  and  the  dry 
bones  of  dogma.  And  he  did  it  all,  not  like  a  sermon, 
but  with  infinite  good  humor  and  good  breeding,  with  the 
pleasing  manners  of  a  man  of  the  world^  He  gave  a 
slight  framework  of  fiction  to  his  Breakfast  Table  series ; 
the  varied  group  of  men  and  women  around  the  social 
board  talk  in  their  own  persons, — yet  all  the  while  you 
feel  that  the  Doctor  has  simply  dramatized  his  own  talk 
for  the  purposes  of  greater  liberty  in  giving  his  mind. 
This  is  the  mark  of  the  true  essayist.  The  method  of  the 
fictionist  is  entirely  different;  his  aim  is  other  and  the 
way  he  attains  it.  The  essayist  is  a  writer  who  can  in 
dulge  in  a  confidential  talk  with  his  reader ;  and  who  can 
say  a  wise  thing  in  so  light  and  happy  a  way  that  you  think 
you  are  simply  amused  when  in  reality  you  are  set  a-think- 


Holmes  217 

ing  and  made  broader  and  better.  Dr.  Holmes  belongs 
to  the  race  of  real  essayists  (and  how  very  few  they  are) 
because  upon  every  page  he  gives  us  such  a  delightful 
revelation  of  himself,  while  he  is  discussing  all  the  affairs 
of  the  universe. 

How  pleasantly,  for  example,  does  he  satirize  preten 
tious  half-knowledge  in  the  following  familiar  passage 
from  the  "  Autocrat  "  :  — 

He?  Veneers  in  first-rate  style.  The  mahogany  scales  off 
now  and  then  in  spots,  and  then  you  see  the  cheap  light  stuff.  — 

I  found very  fine  in  conversational  information,  the  other 

day,  when  we  were  in  company.  The  talk  ran  upon  mountains. 
He  was  wonderfully  well  acquainted  with  the  leading  facts  about 
the  Andes,  the  Apennines,  and  the  Appalachians ;  he  had  noth 
ing  in  particular  to  say  about  Ararat,  Ben  Nevis,  and  various 
other  mountains  that  were  mentioned.  By  and  by  some  Revolu 
tionary  anecdote  came  up,  and  he  showed  singular  familiarity 
with  the  lives  of  the  Adamses,  and  gave  many  details  relating  to 
Major  Andrd.  A  point  of  Natural  History  being  suggested,  he 
gave  an  excellent  account  of  the  air-bladder  of  fishes.  He  was 
very  full  upon  the  subject  of  agriculture,  but  retired  from  the 
conversation  when  horticulture  was  introduced  in  the  discussion. 
So  he  seemed  well  acquainted  with  the  geology  of  anthracite,  but 
did  not  pretend  to  know  anything  of  other  kinds  of  coal.  There 
was  something  so  odd  about  the  extent  and  limitations  of  his 
knowledge,  that  I  suspected  all  at  once  what  might  be  the  mean 
ing  of  it,  and  waited  till  I  got  an  opportunity.  —  "  Have  you  seen 
the  'New  American  Cyclopaedia'  ?"  said  I.  —  "I  have,"  he  re 
plied;  "I  received  an  early  copy."  —  "How  far  does  it  go?" 
He  turned  red  and  answered,  —  "To  Araguay."  —  "Oh,"  said  I 
to  myself,  —  "  not  quite  so  far  as  Ararat ;  that  is  the  reason  he 
knew  nothing  about  it;  but  he  must  have  read  all  the  rest 
straight  through,  and,  if  he  can  remember  what  is  in  this  volume 
until  he  has  read  all  those  that  are  to  come,  he  will  know  more 
than  I  ever  thought  he  would." 


21 8  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Let  the  Professor,  too,  speak  briefly  (but  oh,  how 
keenly !)  of  the  two  professions  of  medicine  and  the  min 
istry.  There  is  to  my  mind  little  diminution  of  the 
Holmes  flavor  in  the  successive  volumes  of  this  essay 
group ;  certainly  the  Professor  talks  as  well  and  as  bril 
liantly  as  the  Poet,  albeit  he  is  a  little  more  serious  in  his 
handling  of  the  graver  themes. 

"Here,  look  at  medicine.  Big  wigs,  gold-headed  canes, 
Latin  prescriptions,  shops  full  of  abominations,  recipes  a  yard 
long,  *  curing '  patients  by  drugging,  as  sailors  bring  a  wind  by 
whistling,  telling  lies  at  a  guinea  apiece  —  a  routine,  in  short, 
of  giving  unfortunate  sick  people  a  mess  of  things  either  too 
odious  to  swallow  or  too  acrid  to  hold,  or,  if  that  were  possible, 
both  at  once.  You  don't  know  what  I  mean,  indignant  and 
not  unintelligent  country  practitioner  ?  Then  you  don't  know 
the  history  of  medicine  —  and  that  is  not  my  fault."  .  .  . 

"The  clergy  have  played  the  part  of  the  fly-wheel  in  our 
modern  civilization.  They  have  never  suffered  it  to  stop. 
They  have  often  carried  on  its  movement,  when  other  moving 
powers  failed,  by  the  momentum  stored  in  their  vast  body. 
Sometimes,  too,  they  have  kept  it  back  by  their  vis  inertia, 
when  its  wheels  were  like  to  grind  the  bones  of  some  old 
canonized  error  into  fertilizers  of  the  soil  that  yields  the  bread 
of  life.  But  the  mainspring  of  the  world's  onward  religious 
movement  is  not  in  them,  nor  in  any  body  of  men,  let  me  tell 
you.  It  is  the  people  that  makes  the  clergy,  and  not  the 
clergy  that  makes  the  people.  Of  course,  the  profession  reacts 
on  its  source  with  variable  energy.  But  there  never  was  a 
guild  of  dealers,  or  a  company  of  craftsmen  who  did  not  need 
sharp  looking  after." 

The  electrically  alive  modern  man  is  to  be  discovered 
in  such  passages ;  indeed,  dip  into  any  book  of  this  same 
series  at  random,  and  you  will  be  likely  to  get  an  electric 
charge  of  thought  along  the  wire  of  a  personality  which 
emits  both  light  and  heat. 


Holmes  219 

In  the  order  here  given,  Dr.  Holmes  produced,  as  has 
been  said,  three  pieces  of  fiction,  —  perhaps  best  styled 
psychological  romances,  with  a  definite  underlying  aim. 
The  first  and  most  striking  was  "Elsie  Vernier";  the 
others  are  "The  Guardian  Angel"  and  "A  Mortal  Antip 
athy,"  all  of  them  published  after  he  was  fifty  years  of  age, 
and  the  last  (decidedly  the  weakest)  when  he  was  nearer 
eighty  than  seventy.  They  were  all  what  is  now  called 
"purpose  novels,"  and  that  purpose  to  portray  under  a 
veil  of  fiction  the  workings  of  heredity.  In  writing  to 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  he  says  of  "Elsie  Vernier"  that 
he  wished  "  to  write  a  story  with  enough  of  interest  in  its 
characters  and  incidents  to  attract  a  certain  amount  of 
popular  attention.  Under  cover  of  this  to  stir  that  mighty 
question  of  automatic  agency  hi  its  relation  to  self-deter 
mination."  In  thus  dealing  with  the  "mysterious  border 
land  which  lies  between  physiology  and  psychology," 
Holmes  trespasses  in  some  sort  upon  the  domain  of  Haw 
thorne.  In  "Elsie  Venner"  the  fact  of  heredity  is  por 
trayed  in  the  powerful  pre-natal  influence  of  a  snake  upon 
a  susceptible  girl ;  a  gruesome  theme,  full  of  suggestion 
and  a  certain  kind  of  fascination.  "  The  Guardian 
Angel,"  in  which  the  inheritance  is  that  of  Indian  blood, 
is  lighter  in  its  tone  and  a  favorite  for  its  mingled  wit  and 
satire.  But  the  medical  man,  the  scientist,  is  apparent  in 
these  books,  to  the  injury  of  the  novelist  pure  and  simple  ; 
hence,  interesting  and  able  as  they  are,  they  belong  in  the 
second  class  of  the  author's  creative  work. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  add  that  during  his  wonderfully 
active  and  long  life  as  a  writer,  Dr.  Holmes  did  a  good 
deal  of  solid  literary  criticism,  in  which  his  graces  of  style 
lighted  up  the  serious  and  what  would  have  been,  in  some 


220  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

hands,  the  heavy  matter  of  his  theme ;  as  well  as  produc 
ing  much  special  work  in  the  field  of  his  chosen  profes 
sion  —  one  paper,  that  on  puerperal  fever,  being  regarded 
as  a  valuable  addition  to  medical  knowledge.  The  variety 
of  his  talent,  the  extent  of  his  interests,  the  polydextrous 
display  of  his  activity,  are  thus  evidenced. 

No  American  author  makes  a  more  distinct  personal 
impression  than  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes;  none  is  more 
affectionately  remembered.  Perhaps  in  the  last  analysis 
it  is  just  this  personal  attitude  he  bears  to  his  audience 
that  will  keep  his  memory  green.  The  true  essayist  has 
always  the  possibility  of  entering  into  this  vital  relation 
with  his  readers.  One  feels  that  there  is  something  per 
sonal,  almost  private,  in  such  an  author's  message  to  one's 
self,  and  this  is  part  of  his  charm.  Occasionally  a  writer 
seems  to  have  a  mission  to  draw  mankind  together  in  the 
social  bond.  This  service  Dr.  Holmes  performed,  and%e 
think  of  the  genial  Autocrat  as  of  a  personal  friend  when 
we  take  his  name  on  our  lips.  To  be  in  literature  a  friend 
to  countless  men  and  women,  beloved  whether  he  be  grave 
or  gay,  was  the  good  fortune  of  the  Little  Man  of  Boston, 
who  yet  occupies  so  large  a  place  among  the  New  England 
writers. 


CHAPTER  X 

WHITTIER 

ANOTHER  New  England  country  boy  who  became  a  well- 
loved  singer  is  John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  of  all  our  bards 
most  appropriately  called  a  poet  of  the  people.  Nothing 
is  more  striking  in  the  study  of  our  elder  men  of  letters 
than  the  frequency  with  which  by  sheer  force  of  character 
and  against  whatever  odds,  they  came  to  perform  great 
services  and  win  a  noble  fame.  Thus,  in  their  own  per 
sons,  do  they  express  the  American  idea. 

This  leader  of  literature  was  of  good  family,  using  the 
phrase  in  the  signification  most  worth  while.  His  ances 
tors  had  dwelt  in  Eastern  Massachusetts  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  when  he  was  born.  They  were  God-fearing, 
law-abiding,  hard-working  folk,  tillers  of  the  soil  who  did 
yeoman  service  in  this  homely  fashion  for  the  common 
wealth.  His  seventeenth-century  ancestor,  Thomas  Whit- 
tier,  was  a  man  of  large  mental  and  moral  stature,  a  giant, 
too,  in  body,  who  settled  in  1638  in  Salisbury,  near  Ames- 
bury,  Massachusetts,  which  was  later  to  become  the  poet's 
home.  In  1647  this  elder  Whittier  removed  to  Haverhill 
and  hewed  the  oaken  beams  for  the  homestead  where  John 
Greenleaf  Whittier  was  born  in  December  of  1807,  two 
years  before  Poe's  birth  in  Boston,  hard  by.  His  mother 
was  a  Greenleaf,  of  a  race  of  farmers,  with  ancestors  of 
genuine  importance ;  and  the  boy  seems  to  have  derived 

221 


222  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

his  most  marked  traits  from  her.  Indeed,  it  is  worth  re 
marking  that  in  the  study  of  great  men  again  and  again 
one  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  maternal  influence  — 
what  has  been  quaintly  called  the  spindle  side  of  the 
house  —  is  most  potent  to  form  character  and  shape  des 
tiny.  Whittier's  mother  united  strength  and  sweetness ; 
she  strove  for  her  son's  education,  she  fostered  his  early 
literary  leanings,  she  was  in  close  sympathy  with  the  gifted 
boy,  intellectually  and  in  all  ways.  The  father,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  a  forthright  farmer,  who  desired  his  son 
to  be  a  farmer,  too. 

Whittier  was  frail-bodied  and  the  long  and  busy  life  he 
led,  though  constantly  hampered  by  ill-health,  was,  no 
doubt,  the  result  of  the  care  he  took  of  himself,  the  fact 
that,  unlike  men  of  stronger  build,  he  dared  not  take  risks 
and  abuse  his  health. 

The  Whittier  home  in  the  east  parish  of  Haverhill, 
Massachusetts,  can  still  be  visited,  for  it  is  preserved  as 
a  memorial,  with  the  original  furniture  and  many  sou 
venirs  of  great  interest.  Of  late  it  has  been  injured  by 
fire,  but  the  restoration  was  speedily  effected.  The  house 
is  picturesquely  set  in  hills  and  woods  and  is  a  fine  speci 
men  of  the  plain,  comfortable  farmhouse  of  the  better 
class  common  to  old  New  England.  From  its  big  kitchen, 
reproduced  so  charmingly  in  "Snow-Bound,"  to  the  un 
finished,  dark-raftered  room  in  the  second  story,  where  the 
boy  Whittier  slept,  it  makes  real  the  early  days  of  the 
poet  as  no  words  can.  John  took  his  part  in  the  chores 
and  farm  duties,  though  his  health  kept  him  from  the 
heavier  work.  He  loved  dogs,  horses,  and  cattle,  and 
got  his  share  of  fun,  outdoors  and  in.  In  his  own  words, 
he  "found  about  equal  satisfaction  in  an  old  rural  home, 


Whittier  223 

with  the  shifting  panorama  of  the  seasons,  in  reading  a 
few  books  within  my  reach,  and  dreaming  of  something 
wonderful  and  good  somewhere  in  the  future."  These 
few  books  comprised,  of  course,  the  Bible,  and  it  entered 
into  the  very  blood  and  bone  of  Whittier,  as  all  his  writ 
ings  show.  There  was  also  a  due  proportion  of  books 
dealing  with  the  literature  of  Quakerdom,  —  for  the  family 
had  been  Quakers  since  the  seventeenth  century. 

For  schooling,  he  attended  the  district  school  inter 
mittently,  and  one  of  the  teachers  there  put  into  his  hands 
one  day  a  volume  of  Burns's  poetry  —  and  lo !  the  world 
of  song  was  auspiciously  opened  to  him.  A  wandering 
ballad-monger  (type  of  the  elder  times)  had  recited  Burns 
to  him  before  this,  so  he  was  ready  for  the  Scotch  people- 
poet,  whom  his  own  work  was  in  many  ways  to  resemble. 
This  district  school  stood  for  Whittier's  education  until  he 
was  nineteen;  then  certain  editors  of  newspapers  in  neigh 
boring  towns  to  whose  columns  Whittier  had  contributed 
verses  —  already  he  was  rhyming  —  urged  the  not  too- 
willing  father  to  send  him  to  the  Haverhill  academy,  and 
his  mother's  influence  was  strong  for  the  idea.  So,  for  two 
terms,  the  young  man  had  this  chance  of  higher  educa 
tion,  taking  a  turn  at  teaching  between  terms  and  making 
slippers  at  twenty-five  cents  the  pair  to  help  pay  expenses. 
This  experience  gave  him  access  to  a  town  library,  and 
he  eagerly  absorbed  the  best  in  English  literature.  This 
much  schooling,  meager  enough  one  might  say,  constituted 
the  formal  education  of  John  Greenleaf  Whittier.  But  all 
his  life  he  was  a  student,  and  in  manhood  he  offered 
an  excellent  example  of  the  self-made  man,  doubly  appre 
ciating  his  opportunities,  and  with  his  unconventional 
sheepskin  signed  by  the  wise  head-master,  Experience. 


224  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Meanwhile,  in  various  local  newspapers,  his  verses  were 
steadily  appearing.  They  attracted  attention,  and  Wil 
liam  Lloyd  Garrison,  who  was  editing  the  Philanthropist 
in  Boston,  tendered  Whittier  the  editorship,  which  was  ac 
cepted  ;  in  1828  a  young  man  only  just  past  his  majority, 
he  became  editor  of  another  paper,  the  American  Manu 
facturer,  and  so  began  his  long,  strenuous  journalistic  life. 
During  the  early  and  mid-years  of  his  manhood  Whittier 
appeared  to  the  world  as  a  newspaper  writer,  agitator,  and 
politician,  rather  than  a  literary  man  —  though  this  seems 
strange  enough  now.  His  interest  in  the  work  of  the 
press  was  always  keen,  his  activity  constant  and  influ 
ential.  The  positions  he  held  indicate  this.  In  1830 
he  conducted  the  Haverhill  Gazette,  the  next  year  the 
New  England  Review,  of  Hartford,  Connecticut,  in  1831 
again  the  Gazette;  for  three  years  (1837  to  1840)  the 
National  Enquirer,  and,  up  to  the  time  that  he  assisted 
in  starting  the  Atlantic  Monthly  in  1857,  he  had  various 
other  newspaper  connections  in  Massachusetts,  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  and  Washington.  Whittier's  interest  in  poli 
tics  began  early  and  never  ceased.  He  kept  closely  in 
touch  with  the  shifting  political  conditions,  and  his  voice 
was  ever  urgent  and  eloquent  in  prose  as  well  as  in  poetry, 
for  what  he  deemed  the  right.  In  1831  he  was  appointed 
delegate  to  the  Whig  National  Convention,  and  two  years 
later  was  a  delegate  to  the  Antislavery  National  Conven 
tion.  It  may  be  seen  from  this  that  when  a  young  man 
in  the  twenties  he  already  had  taken  a  stand  for  the  cause 
which  always  lay  so  close  to  his  heart :  that  of  freeing  the 
black  slaves.  The  stormiest  incidents  in  Whittier's  life 
are  connected  with  the  slavery  agitation,  for  to  be  an  abo 
litionist  in  those  days  was  to  have  the  courage  of  one's 


Whittier 


225 


convictions,  and  to  run  the  risk,  not  only  of  social  unpopu 
larity,  but  of  bodily  harm.  Other  of  the  great  American 
writers  —  Lowell,  to  mention  one  stalwart  example  —  did 
their  full  share  in  the  movement  which  led  to  negro  eman 
cipation.  But  none  of  them  was  so  active  and  entered  so 
dramatically  into  the  struggle  as  did  Whittier. 

Whittier  did  not  believe  in  agitation  and  in  war  for 
their  own  sakes.  He  had  the  Quaker  sympathy  for  peace. 
But  there  was  red  blood  under  the  Quaker-cut  black,  and 
it  flamed  forth  in  lyrics  which  were  as  potent  to  influence 
public  opinion  as  were  the  enactments  of  Congress  or  a 
President's  message.  By  1835  we  find  him  being  mobbed 
in  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  because  of  his  participation 
in  antislavery  meetings,  and  companionship  with  an  Eng 
lish  abolitionist  orator,  who  was  then  lecturing  in  this 
country.  Whittier  escaped  uninjured,  save  that  he  was 
somewhat  lamed  and  his  clothes  ruined.  Later,  at  an 
antislavery  convention  in  Newburyport,  he  was,  as  he 
puts  it,  "  assailed  with  decayed  eggs,  sticks,  and  light  mis 
siles,"  and  again  in  Philadelphia  he  was  a  witness  of  an 
other  scene  of  turbulence  from  the  same  cause.  Men 
who  were  living  out  their  principles  in  this  way  got  some 
thing  into  their  writings  which  the  recluse  scholar  and 
do-nothing  doctrinaire  can  never  command. 

While  the  physically  frail  Whittier  of  the  indomitable 
spirit  was  thus  in  the  thick  of  the  fight,  there  were  changes 
at  the  rural  home.  The  father  had  died,  and  in  1836  the 
paternal  farm  was  sold  and  the  family  moved  to  Amesbury, 
only  a  few  miles  away,  where  a  modest  house  was  pur 
chased.  This  Amesbury  cottage,  which  was  altered  and 
improved  from  time  to  time,  was  the  chief  residence  of  the 
poet  for  the  rest  of  his  days,  a  period  of  over  half  a  cen- 
Q 


226  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

tury.  He  always  returned  to  it  with  pleasure,  and  indeed 
from  1840  was  able  to  live  in  it  for  the  most  part.  Much 
of  his  editorial  and  other  work  for  the  papers,  wherever 
situated,  could  be  done  at  home,  and  this  home  life  with 
the  dear  mother  and  the  sainted  sister,  Elizabeth,  —  one 
of  those  angels  in  the  house  to  glorify  the  homely  things 
of  life,  —  was  an  ideal  one.  There  is  in  the  Amesbury  cot 
tage,  a  certain  room  called  the  garden  room;  it  gives  upon 
a  beautiful,  old-fashioned  garden,  and  in  it  for  many  years 
Whittier  wrote  his  best-known  poems,  stepping  through  a 
door  into  the  midst  of  his  flower-bordered  walks,  if  the 
weather  permitted,  there,  perhaps,  to  put  the  last  touches 
upon  some  lyric,  while  the  birds  and  flowers  of  which  he 
wrote  sang  and  bloomed  about  him. 

There  is  a  touch  of  pathos  in  the  fact  that  Whittier 
remained  a  bachelor.  He  was  devoted  to  his  women-folks 
at  home,  and  was  by  no  means  a  misogynist,  touching  the 
sex  in  general.  Indeed,  out  of  his  own  mouth  he  stands 
confessed  as  an  advocate  of  marriage.  He  wrote  to 
James  T.  Fields,  his  publisher,  on  the  former's  marriage : 
"  Bachelor  as  I  am,  I  congratulate  thee  on  thy  escape  from 
single  (misery)  blessedness.  It  is  the  very  wisest  thing 
thee  ever  did.  Were  I  autocrat,  I  would  see  to  it  that 
every  young  man  over  twenty-five,  and  every  young 
woman  over  twenty  was  married  without  delay.  Perhaps, 
on  second  thought,  it  might  be  well  to  keep  one  old  maid 
and  one  old  bachelor  in  each  town,  by  way  of  warning, 
just  as  the  Spartans  did  their  drunken  helots."  It  may 
be  added  that  all  through  his  life  Whittier's  friendships 
with  women  were  many  and  warm ;  he  delighted  in  this 
companionship  and  communion.  It  is  believed  that  there 
was  a  touch  of  romance  early  in  Whittier's  life.  At  a  time 


Whittier  227 

when  he  was  residing  in  New  York  City  he  met  the  young 
Massachusetts  poet,  Lucy  Hooper,  and,  so  runs  the  ac 
count,  fell  in  love  with  her.  She  died  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
four,  and  the  pensively  beautiful  lyric  "Memories,"  in  all 
probability,  has  an  autobiographic  value.  None  of  our 
poets  has  treated  love  with  a  purer,  lovelier  idealism  than 
Whittier,  and  the  man's  Life  history  is  in  consonance  with 
this  spirit  of  his  work. 

Whittier's  prose  works  we  can  afford  to  ignore  in  this 
study  of  his  place  as  one  of  the  standard  American  poets. 
He  began  to  publish  his  poetry  very  young,  "  Moll  Pitcher  " 
dating  from  1832,  when  he  was  twenty-rive.  It  will  be 
unnecessary  to  enumerate  the  long  list  of  his  books,  but 
it  is  of  special  interest  to  note  that  the  first  general  issue 
of  his  poems  appeared  in  1837.  This  publication  would 
indicate  that  by  this  time,  when  Whittier  was  a  little  over 
thirty,  his  work  was  deemed  of  sufficient  importance  to 
thus  gather  into  a  distinct  collection.  From  the  very 
start  of  his  poetic  career,  he  acquired  the  reputation  of  a 
newspaper  bard.  Much  of  his  verse  was  of  the  polemic 
kind,  treating  of  some  topic  of  the  moment,  fluent  and 
facile,  and,  hence,  also  hasty  and  sometimes  careless  in 
its  art.  He  soon  gained  a  popular  rather  than  a  critical 
reputation,  for  a  man  may  print  a  great  deal  of  newspaper 
verse  without  receiving  recognition  in  the  best  magazines, 
or  may  appear  with  frequency  in  the  magazines,  and  yet 
not  be  reckoned  with  by  the  more  serious  readers  of  book 
poetry.  Therefore,  with  regard  to  the  solid  reputation 
that  really  counts,  Whittier  won  his  way  with  comparative 
slowness.  A  striking  proof  of  all  this  is  given  in  the  fact 
that  his  volume  entitled  "Lays  of  My  Home,"  published 
in  1843,  when  he  was  nearer  forty  than  thirty  years  old, 


228  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

was  the  first  edition  of  his  works  to  bring  him  a  financial 
reward  worth  mentioning.  Up  to  this  time  he  had  no 
realization  of  the  market  value  of  his  wares.  Yet,  every 
once  in  a  while,  he  was  writing  some  fiery  lyric  like  "  Mas 
sachusetts  to  Virginia,"  evoked  by  the  Latimer  fugitive 
slave  case,  or  the  "  Texas  :  Voice  of  New  England,"  which 
came  when  the  country  was  deeply  stirred  by  the  question 
of  the  admission,  of  that  republic  as  a  free  state.  In  such 
volumes  as  "  Lays  of  My  Home,"  "  Voices  of  Freedom," 
and  "  Songs  of  Labor,"  many  fugitive  pieces  which,  at  the 
time,  seemed  perhaps  newspaper  verse  and  nothing  more, 
have  come  to  be  known,  loved,  and  permanently  registered 
amid  the  poetry  of  patriotism  of  our  country. 

Up  to  1857  Whittier  was  slowly  creeping  into  an  as 
sured  place  in  letters.  Gradually  he  had  been  drawn 
away  from  the  more  practical  life  of  editor  and  agitator 
and  politician,  toward  literature.  Back  in  1835  he  was  a 
representative  from  Haverhill  in  the  Massachusetts  legis 
lature  ;  we  positively  know  that  at  that  period  of  his 
career  he  wished  to  become  a  politician  and  looked  for 
ward  to  its  rewards,  giving  up  that  way  of  life  because 
of  his  ill-health.  His  withdrawal  to  the  quiet  Amesbury 
home,  congenial  as  it  was,  was  in  part,  at  least,  enforced  by 
his  physical  condition.  Whittier  had  many  of  the  qualifi 
cations  to  make  a  statesman,  and  long  after  he  gave  up 
the  idea  of  practical  participation  in  that  kind  of  life,  he 
was  consulted  by  leaders  like  Charles  Sumner  as  one 
whose  opinion  was  of  the  very  highest  value.  In  the 
years  just  preceding  the  opening  of  the  war  the  air  was 
electrically  charged,  and  Whittier's  poems  touching  upon 
the  vital  question  of  the  day  inevitably  increased  his  repu 
tation.  It  was  a  great  day  for  song ;  there  was  something 


Whittier  229 

epical  in  its  very  air.  Western  pioneers  marched  to  lyrics 
that  voiced  mighty  principles.  A  man  like  Whittier  could 
ill  be  spared  from  the  procession  of  national  progress,  for 
his  eye  looked  far  beyond  party,  and  his  stern  insistence 
on  a  high  moral  principle  gave  him  a  power  very  different 
from  the  facile  influence  of  the  mere  politician.  Hence 
the  Boston  firm  of  Ticknor  &  Fields  thought  it  an  excel 
lent  time,  in  1856,  to  bring  out  a  volume  in  which  many 
of  his  standard  pieces  are  to  be  found,  —  "Maud  Muller  " 
among  them,  the  authenticity  of  whose  heroine  the  author 
always  valiantly  defended,  and  such  other  lyrics  as 
"  Burns,"  "Tauler,"  "  The  Barefoot  Boy,"  and  "The 
Kansas  Emigrants."  Following  hard  upon  this  volume 
came  in  1857  a  complete  edition  of  his  poems  called 
"  The  Blue  and  Gold  "  edition,  in  the  same  style  which 
the  publishers  had  just  given  to  Longfellow's  works ;  and 
this  same  year  was  founded  the  famous  Atlantic  Monthly 
in  Boston,  still  the  most  dignified,  scholarly,  and,  in  the 
old  sense,  literary  of  American  periodicals.  And  Whittier, 
along  with  such  other  leaders  as  Emerson,  Mrs.  Stowe, 
Lowell,  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Prescott,  and  Motley,  re 
ceived  a  cordial  invitation  to  become  a  contributor.  This 
magazine  connection  gave  him  a  critical  rating  which  be 
fore  he  did  not  possess.  It  meant  a  recognition  of  him 
by  the  small  number  of  readers,  who,  in  some  sort, 
guarded  the  approaches  to  literature,  the  awarding  of  a 
place  long  before  granted  to  Whittier  by  the  people  at 
large,  who,  after  all,  are  in  the  habit  of  settling  these 
things  for  themselves.  Most  of  the  poet's  finest  work  for 
the  next  ten  years  went  into  the  Atlantic,  and  his  "  The 
Gift  of  Tritemius  "  appeared  in  the  first  number.  The 
comparatively  liberal  pay  of  the  Atlantic  for  contributions 


230  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

placed  the  poet  in  easier  circumstances;  and  yet  he  was 
hardly  released  from  the  very  familiar  money-pinch  until 
the  success  of  " Snow-Bound"  in  1866.  Socially,  too,  the 
Atlantic  contact  brought  him  into  delightful  relations,  and 
we  get  pleasant  pictures  of  Whittier  as  he  occasionally 
dropped  into  Boston  drawing-rooms,  soon  to  return,  how 
ever,  to  the  beloved  retreat  at  Amesbury. 

The  appearance  of  the  man  was  striking.  He  wore  a 
coat  of  Quaker  cut,  his  figure  was  erect  and  slight,  with  a 
notably  alert  carriage,  the  eyes  brown  and  wonderfully 
brilliant,  and  an  effect  of  serene  gravity  in  his  whole  per 
sonality.  In  his  youth  he  was  described  by  a  woman 
friend  as  a  very  handsome,  distinguished-looking  young 
man.  All  his  life,  indeed,  he  was  a  distinguished-looking 
person.  The  very  year  of  the  Atlantic's  initiation  brought 
Whittier  heavy  sorrow,  —  typical  of  the  tragi-comedy  we 
call  life.  His  mother  died  at  the  Amesbury  home,  and, 
as  he  wrote  to  Sumner  the  day  after,  half  the  motive 
power  of  life  seemed  lost.  In  one  of  his  best  poems, 
"Telling  the  Bees,"  which  appeared  within  a  month  after 
her  death,  one  seems  to  have  testimony  that  sorrow  can 
be  translated  into  beautiful  song.  When  war  opened 
Whittier  found  plenty  of  inspiration,  as  might  be  expected, 
in  its  stirring  events.  In  the  middle  of  the  conflict  ap 
peared  his  book  "In  War  Time,"  and  therein,  whether 
with  "Barbara  Frietchie"  or  the  rest,  may  be  heard  the 
resonant  human  note  of  the  patriotic  poet  doing  his  share 
for  the  country.  A  year  later  he  had  to  mourn  the  death 
of  his  favorite  sister,  Lizzie,  dearest  of  his  kin  remaining, 
and  there  appeared  the  exquisite  lyric  "The  Vanishers," 
—  again  a  sacred  private  experience  used  for  purposes  of 
public  consolation.  When  the  war  ended,  Whittier's 


Whittier  23 1 

fighting  days  were  over.  He  could  now  turn  from  the 
stern  and  stormy  utterances  of  his  mid-manhood,  and  in 
ripe  maturity  look  back  upon  his  earlier  and  peacefuller 
days  and  write  "Snow-Bound,"  and  many  another  house 
hold  lyric  of  his  country  youth.  With  "Snow-Bound," 
perhaps  the  most  deservedly  popular  of  all  his  poems, 
Whittier  became  a  truly  national  poet,  if  he  was  not  be 
fore.  Such  verse,  homely  in  subject,  happy  in  feeling, 
warmly  human  in  sentiment,  has  both  the  relish  of  reality 
and  the  delicate  idealization  of  a  true  poet's  vision.  Such 
song  has  a  household  virtue.  Its  success  was  instant  and 
hearty.  Materially,  it  meant  more  money  than  Whittier 
had  ever  dreamed  he  would  earn.  The  first  edition  of 
the  book  netted  him  ten  thousand  dollars.  Yet  this 
material  success  came  late,  when  we  realize  that  the 
poet  was  now  well-nigh  sixty  years  of  age.  "Snow- 
Bound"  is  too  long  for  quotation  here,  and  rather  than 
give  extracts  from  it  I  would  commend  its  entire  reading 
to  the  student.  It  can  be  universally  appreciated,  for  it 
is  a  perfect  picture  of  typical  scenes  in  the  homely  life  of 
a  New  England  household  in  the  early  days. 

For  the  long  remainder  of  his  life,  over  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  Whittier  lived  quietly  at  Amesbury,  spending 
parts  of  each  year  at  the  beautiful  country-place  of  kins 
folk  at  Danvers,  Massachusetts,  and  with  frequent  sum 
mer  sojourns  at  neighboring  coast  resorts,  until  his  death 
in  1892.  He  produced  a  succession  of  volumes  contain 
ing  many  of  his  favorite  poems  from  "The  Tent  on  the 
Beach"  in  1867  to  "At  Sundown,"  which  appeared  so 
late  as  1890.  He  wonderfully  retained  his  lyric  gift  to 
the  last;  like  Tennyson,  his  swan-songs  sounded  as  clear 
a  note  as  was  struck  by  his  lyre  when  he  was  in  the  full 


232  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

flush  of  his  powers.  Of  course,  during  these  latest  years 
honor  and  fame  grew  steadily.  He  was  made  an  over 
seer  of  Harvard  College  in  1858,  and  later  received  her 
degree  of  LL.D.  He  was  made  a  trustee  of  Brown  Uni 
versity.  As  in  the  case  of  all  famous  men  of  letters,  his 
acquaintance  widened,  he  was  besieged  by  strangers,  and 
came  to  know  the  burden  of  the  autograph  collector ;  but 
very  lovely  and  pleasant  were  his  days.  His  friendships 
among  literary  men  and  women  were  many,  and  he  awoke 
everywhere  a  peculiar  love  by  his  presence  and  his  worth. 

In  the  early  summer  of  1892  he  had  gone  to  Hampton 
Falls,  New  Hampshire,  but  a  few  miles  from  Amesbury, 
to  spend  several  summer  weeks.  There  he  was  taken  ill, 
and  there  he  died  on  September  7.  The  funeral  services 
were  held  in  the  Amesbury  garden,  into  which,  as  he 
wrote,  he  had  so  often  looked,  where  he  had  so  often 
paced  in  poetic  meditation.  In  the  picturesque  Amesbury 
burying  ground,  set  apart  for  the  use  of  the  Friends,  Whit- 
tier  lies  beside  his  kin,  —  the  broken  circle  of  "Snow- 
Bound  "  reunited  in  the  long  sleep. 

When  Whittier  is  called  a  poet  of  the  people,  the 
phrase  is  unusually  fitting.  His  interests  were  the  com 
mon  interests  of  humanity.  He  did  not  wrap  himself  in 
the  trailing  garments  of  poetry  in  order  to  hide  himself 
from  the  common  gaze  or  tread  misty  regions  not  habited 
by  the  average  human  being.  His  verse  was  always  in 
the  best  sense  practical,  vital,  direct,  and  homely.  He 
early  elected  a  great  cause  as  his  own  and  strove  for  it 
with  his  full  moral  force.  In  this  dispassionate  day  we 
can  see  that  he  was  a  partisan,  and  that  there  was  much 
to  say  on  the  other  side  of  the  slavery  question.  But  it 
is  sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  poetry  for  a  man  to  feel 


Whittier  233 

himself  right  and  to  be  aware  of  the  fact  that  he  has  a 
spiritual  message.  The  political  and  patriotic  poetry  of 
Whittier  is,  therefore,  one  of  the  most  characteristic  as 
pects  of  his  muse.  Yet,  on  the  whole,  it  does  not  stand 
for  his  highest  and  best.  The  noble  dignity  of  the 
"  Centennial  Hymn  "  exhibits  him  at  his  best  in  patriotic 
verse. 

A  beautiful  side  of  his  power  is  to  be  found  in  his 
poems  of  spiritual  theme  or  mood.  Of  this  sort,  nothing 
is  more  a  favorite  and  deservedly  than  "The  Eternal 
Goodness,"  which  here  follows:  — 

THE  ETERNAL  GOODNESS 

0  friends  !  with  whom  my  feet  have  trod 
The  quiet  aisles  of  prayer, 

Glad  witness  to  your  zeal  for  God 
And  love  of  man  I  bear. 

1  trace  your  lines  of  argument ; 
Your  logic  linked  and  strong, 

I  weigh  as  one  who  dreads  dissent, 
And  fears  a  doubt  as  wrong. 

But  still  my  human  hands  are  weak 

To  hold  your  iron  creeds : 
Against  the  words  ye  bid  me  speak 

My  heart  within  me  pleads. 

Who  fathoms  the  Eternal  Thought  ? 

Who  talks  of  scheme  and  plan  ? 
The  Lord  is  God  !    He  needeth  not 

The  poor  device  of  man. 

I  walked  with  bare,  hushed  feet  the  ground 

Ye  tread  with  boldness  shod ; 
I  dare  not  fix  with  mete  and  bound 

The  love  and  power  of  God. 


234  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Ye  praise  His  justice ;  even  such 

His  pitying  love  I  deem : 
Ye  seek  a  king ;  I  fain  would  touch 

The  robe  that  hath  no  seam. 

Ye  see  the  curse  which  overbroods 
A  world  of  pain  and  loss ; 

I  hear  our  Lord's  beatitudes 
And  prayer  upon  the  cross. 

More  than  your  schoolmen  teach,  within 

Myself,  alas !  I  know : 
Too  dark  ye  cannot  paint  the  sin, 

Too  small  the  merit  show. 

I  bow  my  forehead  to  the  dust, 
I  veil  mine  eyes  for  shame, 

And  urge,  in  trembling  self-distrust, 
A  prayer  without  a  claim. 

I  see  the  wrong  that  round  me  lies, 

I  feel  the  guilt  within ; 
I  hear  with  groan  and  travail-cries, 

The  world  confess  its  sin. 

Yet  in  the  maddening  maze  of  things, 
And  tossed  by  storm  and  flood, 

To  one  fixed  trust  my  spirit  clings ; 
I  know  that  God  is  good ! 

Not  mine  to  look  where  cherubim 
And  seraphs  may  not  see, 

But  nothing  can  be  good  in  Him 
Which  evil  is  in  me. 

The  wrong  that  pains  my  soul  below 

I  dare  not  throne  above, 
I  know  not  of  His  hate,  —  I  know 

His  goodness  and  His  love. 


Whittier  235 

I  dimly  guess  from  blessings  known 

Of  greater  out  of  sight, 
And,  with  the  chastened  Psalmist,  own 

His  judgments  too  are  right. 

I  long  for  household  voices  gone, 

For  vanished  smiles  I  long, 
But  God  hath  led  my  dear  ones  on, 

And  He  can  do  no  wrong. 

I  know  not  what  the  future  hath 

Of  marvel  or  surprise, 
Assured  alone  that  life  and  death 

His  mercy  underlies. 

And  if  my  heart  and  flesh  are  weak 

To  bear  an  untried  pain, 
The  bruised  reed  He  will  not  break, 

But  strengthen  and  sustain. 

No  offering  of  my  own  I  have, 

Nor  works  my  faith  to  prove ; 
I  can  but  give  the  gifts  He  gave, 

And  plead  His  love  for  love. 

And  so  beside  the  Silent  Sea" 

I  wait  the  muffled  oar ; 
No  harm  from  Him  can  come  to  me 

On  ocean  or  on  shore. 

I  know  not  where  His  islands  lif t 

Their  f ronded  palms  in  air ; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 

Beyond  His  love  and  care. 

0  brothers !  if  my  faith  is  vain, 

If  hopes  like  these  betray, 
Pray  for  me  that  my  feet  may  gain 

The  sure  and  safer  way. 


236  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

And  Thou,  O  Lord  !  by  whom  are  seen 
Thy  creatures  as  they  be, 

Forgive  me  if  too  close  I  lean 
My  human  heart  on  Thee  ! 


Of  ballads  and  narrative  pieces,  of  which  "  Skipper 
Ireson's  Ride,''  "  Maud  Muller,"  and  "  Barbara  Frietchie  " 
are  familiar  examples,  Whittier  wrote  many,  and  because 
of  their  familiarity  it  is  perhaps  less  necessary  to  give 
them.  I  prefer  to  include  the  poem  called  "  Ichabod," 
in  which  he  sternly  chants  of  what  he  considered  the 
moral  downfall  of  Daniel  Webster,  the  result  being  cer 
tainly  one  of  his  noblest  lyrics. 

• 

ICHABOD 

So  fallen  !  so  lost !  the  light  withdrawn 

Which  once  he  wore ! 
The  glory  from  his  gray  hairs  gone 

For  evermore ! 

Revile  him  not,  the  Tempter  hath 

A  snare  for  all ; 
And  pitying  tears,  not  scorn  and  wrath, 

Befit  his  fall ! 

Oh,  dumb  be  passion's  stormy  rage, 

When  he  who  might 
Have  lighted  up  and  led  his  age, 

Falls  back  in  night. 

Scorn !  would  the  angels  laugh,  to  marl? 

A  bright  soul  driven, 
Fiend-goaded,  down  the  endless  dark, 

From  hope  and  heaven  ! 


Whi  trier  237 

Let  not  the  land  once  proud  of  him 

Insult  him  now, 
Nor  brand  with  deeper  shame  his  dim, 

Dishonored  brow. 

But  let  its  humbled  sons,  instead, 

From  sea  to  lake, 
A  long  lament,  as  for  the  dead, 

In  sadness  make. 

Of  all  we  loved  and  honored,  naught 

Save  power  remains ; 
A  fallen  angel's  pride  of  thought, 

Still  strong  in  chains. 

All  else  is  gone ;  from  those  great  eyes 

The  soul  has  fled : 
When  faith  is  lost,  when  honor  dies, 

The  man  is  dead  ! 

Then,  pay  the  reverence  of  old  days 

To  his  dead  fame ; 
Walk  backward,  with  averted  gaze, 

And  hide  the  shame  ! 

For  one  more  example  of  the  merging  of  personal  sor 
row  in  a  beautifully  tender  and  simple  faith  —  a  religious 
attitude  typical  of  all  Whittier's  life  and  literature  —  "  The 
Vanishers  "  should  be  read. 

But  perhaps  there  is  no  division  of  Whittier's  verse 
where  the  native  characteristics  of  his  genius  are  better 
to  be  seen  than  in  those  homely  narratives  and  songs  and 
pictures  for  which  "  Snow-Bound  "  stands  a  type.  There 
are  sundry  lesser  and  hence  quotable  lyrics  which  here 
belong,  and  at  least  one  of  them  must  be  included. 

We  may  listen  finally  to  that  universal  favorite,  "In 
School  Days,"  where  the  delicate  implication  of  auto- 


238  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

biographic  experience,  in  the  light  of  what  we  now  know 
of  Whittier's  life,  lends  the  needed  touch  of  truth  to  a 
pathos  which,  whether  as  art  or  life,  goes  very  deep :  — 

IN  SCHOOL  DAYS 

Still  sits  the  schoolhouse  by  the  road, 

A  ragged  beggar  sleeping ; 
Around  it  still  the  sumachs  grow, 

And  blackberry  vines  are  creeping. 

Within,  the  master's  desk  is  seen, 

Deep  scarred  by  raps  official ; 
The  warping  floor,  the  battered  seats, 

The  jack-knife's  carved  initial ; 

The  charcoal  frescoes  on  its  wall ; 

Its  door's  worn  sill,  betraying 
The  feet  that,  creeping  slow  to  school, 

Went  storming  out  to  playing ! 

Long  years  ago  a  winter  sun 

Shone  over  it  at  setting ; 
Lit  up  its  western  window  panes, 

And  low  eaves'  icy  fretting. 

It  touched  the  tangled  golden  curls, 
And  brown  eyes  full  of  grieving, 

Of  one  who  still  her  steps  delayed 
When  all  the  school  were  leaving. 

For  near  her  stood  the  little  boy 

Her  childish  favor  singled : 
His  cap  pulled  low  upon  a  face 

Where  pride  and  shame  were  mingled. 

Pushing  with  restless  feet  the  snow 
To  right  and  left,  he  lingered ;  — 

As  restlessly  her  tiny  hands 

The  blue-checked  apron  fingered. 


Whittier  239 

He  saw  her  lift  her  eyes ;  he  felt 
The  soft  hand's  light  caressing, 

And  heard  the  tremble  of  her  voice, 
As  if  a  fault  confessing. 

"I'm  sorry  that  I  spelt  the  word  : 

I  hate  to  go  above  you, 
Because,"  —  the  brown  eyes  lower  fell,  — 

"Because,  you  see,  I  love  you  I" 

Still  memory  to  a  gray-haired  man 
That  sweet  child  face  is  showing. 

Dear  girl !  the  grasses  on  her  grave 
Have  forty  years  been  growing ! 

He  lives  to  learn,  in  life's  hard  school, 

How  few  who  pass  above  him 
Lament  their  triumph  and  his  loss, 

Like  her,  —  because  they  love  him. 

It  is  much  for  a  poet  to  be  beloved  as  is  Whittier ; 
much  for  him  and  much  for  his  country.  His  place  in 
the  native  song  is  far  more  than  an  historical  thing.  It 
is  present  and  living  and  potent.  His  contemporaneous 
influence  was  very  great ;  that  part  of  his  work  which  first 
gave  him  prominence  has,  in  the  course  of  years,  and  with 
the  truer  critical  discrimination,  become  subordinate,  but 
his  best  verse  is  securer  now  than  ever  it  was ;  is  safe  in 
an  undying  regard. 

Whittier's  poetry  was  no  perfect  thing.  He  wrote  too 
hastily  and  too  much.  His  was  a  day  when  technique 
was  less  considered.  The  very  facility  of  his  metrical 
writing  was  for  him  a  dangerous  thing.  As  a  result,  a 
large  amount  of  his  verse  work  has  been  thrown  aside ; 
with  few  exceptions  that  which  remains  could  be  improved 
by  compression.  But  on  the  other  hand  he  had  a  native 


240  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

gift  for  lyric  utterance ;  he  was  a  natural  singer,  if  there 
ever  was  one.  His  finest  lyrics  are  beautiful  as  works  of 
art  as  well  as  spiritual  messages,  and  it  is  just  in  this 
union  of  moral  purpose  with  the  sense  of  beauty — I  have 
said  ekewhere  that  the  one  rhyme  of  his  poetry  is  that 
made  by  beauty  and  duty  —  that  the  true  merit  of  Whittier 
is  to  be  found,  the  explanation  of  his  place  with  the  major 
American  singers.  He  is  at  once  the  poet  of  a  section 
and  yet  a  national  poet. 

Moreover  he  was  a  man  whose  character  was  such  that 
one  admires  him  in  his  life  as  much  as  in  his  literature. 
Entirely  aside  from  his  literary  gifts  he  was  in  the  full 
sense  a  good  man  whose  life  was  sweet  and  true  and  high. 
His  religion  was  a  doing  of  good,  and  his  sincere  love  for 
his  fellow-men  and  his  wholesome  reverence  for  righteous 
ness,  together  with  his  natural  singing  voice,  produced  a 
body  of  literature  not  to  be  obscured  by  any  change  of 
literary  models  nor  effaced  by  the  passing  of  the  years. 


CHAPTER  XI 

LOWELL 

IN  his  "  Representative  Men  "  Emerson  treats  of  Goethe 
as  the  beau  ideal  of  the  man  of  letters  —  standing  for  such 
an  all-round  culture  and  wide  contact  with  the  world 
that  the  title  best  describes  his  varied  accomplishment. 
Lowell,  of  all  our  literary  men,  may  be  chosen  as  our 
representative  man  of  letters ;  he  was  more,  and  yet  less, 
than  if  he  had  been  solely  poet,  essayist,  or  writer  of 
romance.  Scholar,  teacher,  editor,  wit,  diplomat,  —  he 
did  many  things  and  did  them  conspicuously  well.  And 
yet,  he  perhaps  might  have  made  a  deeper  impress  upon 
American  literature  had  he  done  but  the  one  and  with  less 
of  versatility,  and  remained  steadfast  to  a  single  love. 
However,  the  loss  in  one  direction  means  a  gain  in  the 
other.  James  Russell  Lowell  was  a  very  great  citizen 
besides  doing  notable  work  as  critic,  essayist,  and  poet. 
Mr.  Aldrich  said  of  him  that  no  American  of  his  day  had 
"so  various  and  admirable  gifts." 

Hardly  more  than  round  the  corner  from  Longfellow's 
Craigie  House  in  Cambridge,  is  another  stately  residence, 
a  fine  old  house  dating  from  Revolutionary  days,  set  in 
ample  grounds  and  with  an  air  about  it  of  dignified,  rural 
retirement.  This  is  Elmwood,  the  family  estate  where 
James  Russell  Lowell  was  born,  lived,  and  died.  It  is 
refreshing,  at  a  time  when  so  many  Americans  early  and 
R  241 


242  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

late  are  of  necessity  homeless  nomads,  —  living  in  flats, 
moving  every  other  year  and  striking  roots  into  the  soil 
nowhere,  —  to  study  the  life  of  a  man  of  letters  whose 
home  was  that  of  his  forefathers  and  who,  however  wide 
his  wanderings,  in  a  sense  never  left  it. 

Elmwood  plays  an  important  role  in  the  drama  of 
Lowell's  life.  The  best  of  his  literature  was  made  under 
its  elms  or  among  the  books  of  its  library ;  and  all  his 
days  was  he  set  about  by  books,  environed  in  a  culture 
which  only  fructified  his  native  power  —  a  proof  that  cul 
ture  is  for  the  strong.  "Here  I  am  in  my  garret,"  he 
writes  in  maturity;  "I  slept  here  when  I  was  a  little 
curly-headed  boy." 

Like  Longfellow  and  Holmes,  and  unlike  Whittier  and 
Bryant,  Lowell  is  an  example  of  a  New  Englander  of  the 
best  blood  and  breeding,  who  had  the  power  to  take  ad 
vantage  of  his  opportunities  and  not  be  swamped  by  them ; 
and  so  finally  became  one  of  our  leaders  in  American 
literature.  The  roll  of  his  ancestors,  immediate  and  re 
mote,  is  rather  a  formidable  one.  The  Lowell  family  has 
for  a  long  time  stood  high  in  Massachusetts.  The  original 
ancestor  was  an  English  merchant  who  settled  there  in 
the  early  seventeenth  century.  The  city  of  Lowell  was 
named  after  the  poet's  grandfather,  who  was  also  known 
for  introducing  the  manufacture  of  cotton  into  this  coun 
try.  That  famed  institution,  the  Lowell  Institute,  with  its 
free  lecture  system,  is  the  benefaction  of  his  first  cousin ; 
his  grandfather,  John,  was  a  member  of  the  Continental 
Congress  and  chief  justice  in  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court,  and  it  was  he  who  drew  up  the  antislavery  clause 
in  the  Massachusetts  Bill  of  Rights.  His  father,  Charles, 
was  the  long-time  pastor  of  a  Unitarian  church  in  Boston, 


Lowell  243 

when  Unitarianism  was  fast  becoming  fashionable.  Such 
a  background  for  a  boy  seems  almost  a  handicap  in  the 
race  of  life;  it  suggests  the  picture  of  a  spindle-legged, 
big-headed  urchin  whose  expression  is  doleful  because  he 
has  so  much  to  live  up  to. 

But  his  ancestry  does  not  appear  to  have  worried  James 
Russell  Lowell,  who  was  born  in  1819,  ten  years  after 
Whittier  and  Longfellow,  but  who  in  his  work  and  associa 
tions  may  be  regarded  as  their  contemporary.  His  mother 
was  of  Scotch  descent  and  had  in  her  memory  a  store  of 
legendary  stories  of  that  land  of  poetry  and  romance, 
which,  the  report  runs,  "  She  sang  over  the  cradles  of  her 
children  and  repeated  in  their  school  days  until  poetic 
lore  and  feeling  were  as  natural  to  them  as  the  bodily 
senses."  Indeed,  Lowell  has  stated  that  he  derived  both 
his  love  of  nature  and  his  poetic  temperament  from  her. 

He  was  a  particularly  lively,  natural,  healthy  lad,  wrho 
wras  educated  at  a  private  school,  where  he  exhibited 
plenty  of  capacity  for  fun  and  frolic,  and  then  did  the 
inevitable  thing  for  a  fellow  of  his  sort,  —  went  to  Harvard 
College.  At  school  he  was  a  good  scholar,  though  no  dig, 
and  by  the  time  college  days  came  he  is  revealed  in  his 
" Letters"  (edited  by  his  friend  and  literary  executor, 
Prof.  C.  E.  Norton)  as  a  young  man  wrho  read  a  great 
deal,  was  decidedly  literary  in  his  tastes,  had  high  spirits 
and  a  good  deal  of  pride,  was  shy  in  a  wyay,  but  possessed 
of  a  plentiful  supply  of  humor,  —  and  humor  was  to  be 
one  of  Lowell's  marked  traits  as  man  and  writer.  He 
began  to  develop  a  love  for  fine  books,  books  scarce  to 
find  and  of  coveted  editions,  the  estrays  and  curios  of 
literature.  The  Elmwood  library  numbered  some  four 
thousand  well-chosen  volumes  and  must  have  been  a 


244  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

fascinating  one  to  nibble  one's  way  through.  His  read 
ing  —  and  no  man  read  more  omnivorously  and  to  better 
results  of  culture  —  was  mostly  outside  of  text-books,  how 
ever,  for  he  says  he  devoured  everything  but  the  necessary 
aids  to  college  progress.  Hence,  naturally,  his  college 
standing  was  not  remarkable ;  moreover  (the  Adam  in  us 
will  perhaps  delight  in  the  fact),  the  neglect  of  the  cur 
riculum  along  with  certain  mysterious  pranks  which  it  is 
hard  to  learn  of  definitely  from  his  biographers,  led  to 
rustication  at  Concord  in  his  senior  year ;  this,  although 
he  was  class  poet,  so  that  his  poem  had  to  be  read  by 
another  on  class  day  and  he  returned  at  commencement 
in  time  to  take  a  sheepskin.  It  is  amusing  to  know  that 
Lowell,  for  whom  Concord,  as  a  haunt  and  high  seat  of 
the  Transcendentalists,  might  be  supposed  to  have  attrac 
tion,  did  not  like  that  classic  spot  at  all. 

He  was  nineteen  when  he  took  his  degree  and  —  what  so 
often  happens  with  young  men  inclined  towards  letters  — 
at  sea  as  to  his  life-work.  Law  offered  itself  as  a  solution, 
and  at  his  legal  studies  at  Harvard  he  went,  even  going 
so  far  as  to  have  an  office  after  the  LL.B.  was  won  and, 
nominally  at  least,  to  practice  a  little.  Lowell's  legal 
training  can  be  traced  as  a  definite  element  in  his  literary 
production  and  certainly  added  strength  to  it  and  so  was 
by  no  means  labor  wasted.  For  four  years  he  was  thus  a 
knight  of  the  green  bag,  in  the  meanwhile  writing  maga 
zine  papers  and  eking  out  in  this  way  his  not  over-large 
income.  For  his  first  editorial  work  he  started  the  Pioneer 
Magazine  in  1843,  to  which  such  notables  as  Mrs.  Brown 
ing,  and  the  Americans,  Poe  and  Hawthorne,  contributed, 
but  which  nevertheless  died  young,  —  only  three  numbers 
being  printed. 


Lowell  245 

What  was  beyond  doubt  a  turning  point  in  his  career 
came  in  1844,  when  he  married  Maria  White,  a  New  Eng 
land  woman  of  the  finest  type  ;  beautiful,  cultured,  herself 
a  poet,  some  of  whose  tender  lyrics  have  survived  in  the 
anthologies.  She  had  the  instinct  of  the  reformer,  with  a 
special  interest  in  the  antislavery  movement,  which  was 
then  beginning  to  be  a  burning  question  of  the  day. 
Lowell's  own  fiery  championship  of  the  cause  of  the 
black  man  may  well  have  been  fanned  by  her  wifely  zeal. 
In  any  event,  he  became  a  frequent  contributor  to  the 
Antislavery  Standard  and  soon  was  known  as  an  ardent 
defender  of  the  faith  that  was  in  him,  —  evoking  the  bitter 
diatribes  of  Poe,  who,  with  his  hot  Southern  sympathies, 
could  ill  brook  the  fervor  of  the  New  England  Abolition 
ists.  Thus  Lowell,  who  in  his  class-day  poem  had  poked 
fun  at  these  reformers,  became  one  of  them  himself,  and, 
like  Whittier,  found  a  motive  for  his  early  verse  in  a  great 
moral  issue.  He  had  already  published  a  volume  of 
poems,  "  A  Year's  Life,"  in  1841  ;  which,  however,  was  in 
no  way  significant.  But  three  years  later,  when  he  was 
twenty-five,  the  publication  of  a  book  entitled  "  Poems," 
drew  attention  to  a  man  of  genuine  voice.  The  next  year 
he  revealed  himself  as  a  critic  to  reckon  with  in  "  Con 
versations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets,"  a  volume  now 
precious  to  lovers  of  American  literature  in  general  and 
of  Lowell  in  particular.  These  early  years  were  passed  at 
Elmwood  in  quiet,  fruitful  study  and  meditation  in  his 
garden  ;  indoors  and  out  alike  he  found  stimulus  for  his 
prose  and  verse ;  while  now  and  then  he  flashed  forth 
with  a  word  on  slavery  which  awoke  the  North  ;  as  where, 
when  feeling  ran  high  over  the  admission  of  Texas  as  a 
state  and  the  consequent  extension  of  slavery  in  the 


246  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

country,  he  published  "The  Present  Crisis"  —  a  stalwart 
invocation  to  truth  and  right  even  though  men  beheld 

Truth  forever  on  the  scaffold,  Wrong  forever  on  the  throne. 

And  now  there  began  to  appear  in  the  Boston  Courier  in 
1846,  when  Lowell  was  twenty-seven,  the  first  series  of 
papers  which  have  become  everywhere  known  as  the 
"Biglow  Papers";  humorous  verse  which  was,  much  to 
the  author's  surprise,  to  lift  him  into  a  prominence  un 
dreamed  of  and  by  no  means  secured  by  the  serious  lyric 
work  he  had  already  done.  He  had  written  pensive, 
lovely  lyrics  like  "She  Came  and  Went,"  "The  Change 
ling,"  "A  Requiem";  and  in  the  year  the  Biglow  series 
began,  had  appeared  one  of  his  nobler  poems  of  culture 
and  foreign  theme,  "The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  a  treat 
ment  of  the  legend  of  the  Holy  Grail,  having  a  spiritual 
breath  and  beauty  of  coloring  which  remind  the  reader  of 
Tennyson.  In  this  poem  occurs  the  stanza  beginning]:  — 

What  is  so  rare  as  a  day  in  June, 
Then,  if  ever,  come  perfect  days, 

dearly  familiar  to  every  lover  of  American  nature  and 
poetry.  It  was  plain  enough  before  that  in  Lowell 
America  had  a  bard  of  gift  and  great  ethical  earnestness. 
But  when  he  conceived  and  carried  out  the  idea  of  putting 
into  the  mouth  of  a  homely  New  England  farmer,  Hosea 
Biglow,  the  shrewd  rustic  wisdom  of  the  countryside, 
touching  the  vital  questions  of  the  day,  local  and  national, 
with  many  comments  in  the  way  of  introductions  and 
letters  by  Hosea's  parson  friend,  Wilbur,  it  was  a  stroke 
of  genius;  and  what  the  author  deemed  at  first  a  mere 
newspaper  squib,  and  when  it  was  finished,  a  jeu  d' esprit, 


Lowell  247 

became  the  veritable  document  of  a  poet  and  eventually 
a  standard  piece  of  American  literature.  This  is  all  the 
more  remarkable  in  that  Lowell  started  the  papers  with 
a  bit  of  verse  commenting  on  the  sight  of  an  officer  in 
Boston  raising  a  regiment  of  recruits  for  the  Mexican 
War,  a  purely  local  incident ;  verse  on  other  subjects  fol 
lowed,  and  the  collection  was  published  in  book  form  in 
1848,  the  second  series  as  a  book  in  1867,  after  it  had  run 
in  the  Atlantic  during  the  bellicose  years  1862-1866,  the 
poet  now  having  the  advantage  of  the  tremendous  theme 
of  the  Civil  War. 

While  the  "Biglow  Papers"  are  described  in  a  phrase 
as  humorous  poetry,  they  are  far  more  than  is  perhaps 
implied  by  the  description ;  humor  they  have,  audacious 
and  unique.  Lowell  possessed  a  wonderful  talent  for 
handling  the  Yankee  dialect;  all  his  life  a  student  of 
language,  who  yet  possessed  popular  sympathies  and  the 
red  blood  of  a  virile  personality,  he  here  drew  on  these 
resources.  He  was  a  pioneer  in  using  for  literary  pur 
poses  the  quaint  vernacular  of  the  people.  Charles  Sum- 
ner  said  of  the  "Biglow  Papers"  that  it  was  a  pity  that 
they  were  not  written  in  the  English  language.  But  we 
have  come  in  these  days  to  regard  it  as  one  of  the  merits 
of  modern  literature  that  a  Lowell  early<or  a  Riley  late 
can  let  the  simple  folks  speak  —  it  means  the  coming  of 
the  democratic  spirit  into  our  letters.  Lowell's  prose 
introductions  to  the  Biglow  series  on  New  England  speech 
are  the  best  deliverances  ever  made  on  the  subject. 

Both  the  homely  idyllic  quality  and  the  canny  hard- 
headedness  of  the  New  England  democratic  type  are  de- 
liciously  conveyed  in  these  papers  by  a  man  who  really 
knew  and  loved  them;  and  with  a  mastery  of  the  metrical 


248  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

material  such  as  has  never  been  surpassed  in  the  history 
of  American  literature.  With  this  control  of  the  poetic 
medium,  went  a  deep  patriotism,  a  love  alike  of  section 
and  of  country,  lifting  it  all  to  a  height  of  moral  earnest 
ness  and  power  such  as  to  give  the  verse  the  dignity  of 
a  large  vital  theme.  An  extract  may  follow  showing  the 
idyllic  aspect  of  this  rural  type ;  a  poem  always  popular 
because  so  richly  human,  so  charmingly  true  to  the  un 
changing  elements  in  humanity. 


THE  COURTIN' 

God  makes  sech  nights,  all  white  an'  still 

Fur'z  you  can  look  or  listen, 
Moonshine  an'  snow  on  field  an'  hill, 

All  silence  an'  all  glisten. 

Zekle  crep'  up  quite  unbeknown 
An'  peeked  in  thru'  the  winder, 

An'  there  sot  Huldy  all  alone, 
'ith  no  one  nigh  to  hender. 

A  fireplace  filled  the  room's  one  side 
With  half  a  cord  o'  wood  in  — 

Ther  warn't  no  stoves  (tell  comfort  died) 
To  bake  ye  to  a  puddin'. 

The  wa'nut  logs  shot  sparkles  out 
Towards  the  pootiest,  bless  her, 

An'  leetle  flames  danced  all  about 
The  chiny  on  the  dresser. 

Agin  the  chimbley  crook-necks  hung, 

An'  in  amongst  'em  rusted 
The  ole  queen's-arm  thet  gran'ther  Young 

Fetched  back  fom  Concord  busted. 


Lowell  249 

The  very  room,  coz  she  was  in, 

Seemed  warm  f  om  floor  to  ceilin', 
An'  she  looked  full  ez  rosy  agin 

Ez  the  apples  she  was  peelin'. 

Twas  kin'  o'  kingdom  come  to  look 

On  sech  a  blessed  cretur, 
A  dogrose  blushin'  to  a  brook 

Ain't  modester  nor  sweeter. 

He  was  six  foot  o1  man,  Ai, 

Clear  grit  an'  human  natur1, 
None  couldn't  quicker  pitch  a  ton 

Nor  dror  a  furrer  straighter. 

He'd  sparked  it  with  full  twenty  gals,  "" 
Hed  squired  'em,  danced  'em,  druv  'em, 

Fust  this  one,  an'  then  thet,  by  spells  — 
All  is,  he  couldn't  love  'em. 

But  long  o'  her  his  veins  'ould  run 

All  crinkly  like  curled  maple, 
The  side  she  breshed  felt  full  o'  sun 

Ez  a  south  slope  in  Ap'il. 

She  thought  no  v'ice  hed  sech  a  swing 

Ez  hisn  in  the  choir ; 
My  !  when  he  made  Ole  Hunderd  ring, 

She  knowed  the  Lord  was  nigher. 

An'  she'd  blush  scarlit,  right  in  prayer, 

When  her  new  meetin'-bunnet 
Felt  somehow  thru'  its  crown  a  pair 

O'  blue  eyes  sot  upon  it. 

Thet  night,  I  tell  ye,  she  looked  some! 

She  seemed  to  've  gut  a  new  soul, 
For  she  felt  sartin-sure  he'd  come, 

Down  to  her  very  shoe  sole. 


250  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

She  heered  a  foot,  an'  knowed  it  tu, 
A-raspin'  on  the  scraper,  — 

All  ways  to  once  her  feelins  flew 
Like  sparks  in  burnt-up  paper. 

He  kin'  o'  1'itered  on  the  mat, 
Some  doubtfle  o'  the  sekle, 

His  heart  kep'  goin'  pity-pat, 
But  hern  went  pity  Zekle. 

An'  yit  she  gin  her  cheer  a  jerk 
Ez  though  she  wished  him  furder, 

An'  on  her  apples  kep'  to  work, 
Parin'  away  like  murder. 

"You  want  to  see  my  Pa,  I  s'pose?" 
"  Wai  ...  no  ...  I  come  dasignin'  ' 

"To  see  my  Ma?    She's  sprinklin'  clo'es 
Agin  to-morrer's  i'nin'." 

To  say  why  gals  acts  so  or  so, 
Or  don't  'ould  be  persumin'; 

Mebby  to  mean  yes  an'  say  no 
Comes  nateral  to  women. 

He  stood  a  spell  on  one  foot  fust, 
Then  stood  a  spell  on  t'other, 

An'  on  which  one  he  felt  the  wust 
He  couldn't  ha'  told  ye  nuther. 

Says  he,  "I'd  better  call  agin :" 
Says  she,  "Think  likely,  Mister  :" 

Thet  last  word  pricked  him  like  a  pin, 
An'  .  .  .  Wai,  he  up  an'  kist  her. 

When  Ma  bimeby  upon  'em  slips, 

Huldy  sot  pale  ez  ashes, 
All  kin'  o'  smily  roun'  the  lips 

An'  teary  roun'  the  lashes. 


Lowell  251 

For  she  was  jes'  the  quiet  kind 

Whose  naturs  never  vary, 
Like  streams  that  keep  a  summer  mind 

Snowhid  in  Jenooary. 

The  blood  clost  roun'  her  heart  felt  glued 

Too  tight  for  all  expressin', 
Tell  mother  see  how  metters  stood, 

An'  gin  'em  both  her  blessin'. 

Then  her  red  come  back  like  the  tide 

Down  to  the  Bay  o'  Fundy, 
An'  all  I  know  is  they  was  cried 

In  meetin'  come  nex'  Sunday. 


The  "Biglow  Papers"  swept  the  country;  they  were 
quoted  and  admired  in  England.  Lowell  became  a  power 
not  only  in  literature  but  in  American  life.  They  con 
stitute  one  of  the  four  or  five  major  productions,  which, 
along  with  a  few  exquisite  short  lyrics,  complete  this  poet's 
claim  to  a  permanent  place  among  American  singers. 

Each  year  of  the  few  years  between  1844  and  1850  was 
an  annus  mirabilis,  —  a  wonderful  year  with  James  Rus 
sell  Lowell,  for  in  1848,  the  date  of  the  "Biglow  Papers," 
a  volume  of  lyrics,  called  simply  "  Poems,"  was  also  put 
into  print  and  strengthened  his  place  as  a  lyric  poet;  and 
still  another  side  of  his  talent  came  to  light  in  the  "  Fable 
for  Critics,"  in  which,  with  infinitely  clever  mastery  of 
humorous  jingle  and  a  keenly  critical  yet  kindly  hitting  off 
of  the  characteristics  of  the  poets  of  his  day  (most  of  the 
judgments  wonderfully  verified  by  time)  Lowell  exhibited 
himself  as  a  critic  of  importance  in  verse,  even  as  he  was 
to  be  in  the  essay.  That  he  was  aware  of  his  own  limi 
tations,  as  well  as  those  of  his  brother  bards,  the  following 


252  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

estimate  of  himself  shows,  and  the  passage  will  serve  to 
illustrate  the  style  and  meter  of  this  famous  production:  — 

There  is  Lowell  who's  striving  Parnassus  to  climb 

With  a  whole  bale  of  isms  tied  together  with  rhyme ; 

He  might  get  on  alone,  spite  of  brambles  and  bowlders, 

But  he  can't  with  that  bundle  he  has  on  his  shoulders. 

The  top  of  the  hill  he  will  ne'er  come  nigh  reaching 

Till  he  learns  the  distinction  'twixt  singing  and  preaching ; 

His  lyre  has  some  chords  which  would  ring  pretty  well, 

But  he'd  rather  by  half  make  a  drum  of  the  shell, 

And  rattle  away  till  he's  old  as  Methusalem 

At  the  head  of  a  march  to  the  lost  New  Jerusalem. 

Lowell  was  now  fairly  launched.  The  author  of  the 
"Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  "  A  Fable  for  Critics,"  and  the 
"  Biglow  Papers,"  to  say  nothing  of  the  lesser  poems,  was 
hereafter  a  man  of  assured  position  with  critics  and  pub 
lic.  His  home  thrusts  against  slavery,  and  later  his  views 
on  the  war  and  the  attitude  of  a  certain  class  of  Ameri 
cans  toward  British  opinion,  had  vitally  affected  public 
thought.  He  was  not  only  poet  but  reformer. 

But  a  cloud  had  appeared  in  the  poet  scholar's  Elm- 
wood  home ;  Mrs.  Lowell's  health  was  failing.  A  Euro 
pean  trip  in  1851-1852  was  undertaken  with  the  hope  of 
benefiting  her,  but  an  infant  son  was  lost  at  Rome,  the 
mother  drooped,  and  when  they  had  returned  she  died 
the  next  year,  —  to  leave  the  husband  lonely,  with  work 
the  best  narcotic.  In  1855  he  lectured  before  the  Lowell 
Institute,  a  fit  incumbent  of  the  lectureship  bearing  the 
family  name,  with  such  success  that  it  was  natural  the 
appointment  to  the  language  professorship  at  Harvard 
made  vacant  by  the  withdrawal  of  Longfellow  should 
follow  the  same  year.  As  a  college  teacher  Lowell  was 


Lowell  253 

at  once  unconventional  and  fascinating ;  he  ignored  tradi 
tions,  made  regular  note-taking  in  class  an  impossibility, 
and  whenever  he  liked  would  leave  the  elected  subject, 
"  talking  away  across  country  till  he  felt  like  stopping," 
as  Barrett  Wendell  describes  it ;  or  he  would  gather  a 
few  students  at  his  house  for  a  Dante  reading  which  was 
to  be  the  richest  memory  of  their  college  life.  He  held 
the  position  over  twenty  years,  but  in  the  end  found,  as 
did  Longfellow  before  him,  that  it  checked  his  creative 
work  —  "it  damped  my  gunpowder,"  in  his  picturesque 
phrase.  But  for  many  years  his  days  were  passed  in  en 
joyable  literary  labor  and  in  college  duties,  with  an  occa 
sional  outing  in  Europe  and  with  a  domestic  life  full  of 
charm,  breeding,  and  social  leadership. 

In  1857  Lowell  married  for  his  second  wife  Frances 
Dunlap,  who  had  come  into  his  family  as  friend  and  com 
panion  to  his  first  wife.  It  was  a  union  in  every  way  fit 
and  happy.  Lowell  united  as  few  men  ever  do  the  habits 
of  the  scholar  and  man  of  the  world.  He  would  sit  wrhole 
days  among  his  books  in  lounging  coat  and  with  pipe  in 
mouth,  happy  that  he  might  make  marginal  notes,  chase 
a  remote  clew,  and  taste  the  recondite  pleasure  of  the 
specialist ;  yet  when  he  emerged  from  his  chrysalis,  he 
could  take  the  wing  in  the  brilliant  social  world  of  such 
a  cultured  center  as  Boston.  His  studies  took  him  far 
afield  in  language  and  literature  ;  but  instead  of  an  assimi 
lation  barren  of  fruit,  all  his  debts  to  others  were  repaid 
in  the  mellow  vintage  of  his  own  books  of  essays.  After 
the  first  creative  period  in  verse,  this  prose  writing  be 
came  more  prominent  and  was  embodied  in  four  main 
volumes,  the  issue  of  his  ripe  maturity :  "  Fireside  Trav 
els,"  in  1864,  "Among  My  Books,"  first  series  1870,  sec- 


254  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

ond  series  1876,  "My  Study  Windows,"  1871,  to  which 
may  be  added  two  books  of  political  papers  and  addresses 
in  1877  and  1888,  and  two  more  the  year  after  his  death; 
"Latest  Literary  Essays  and  Addresses/'  and  the  delight 
ful  "Old  English  Dramatists,"  a  Lowell  Lecture  series  in 
which  he  returned  to  a  first  love  and  talked  of  the  English 
writers  he  had  as  a  young  man  been  fond  of  in  a  volume 
of  1845.  These  successive  books  of  essays  were  hailed 
as  the  prose  work  of  an  American  writer  of  charm  and 
distinction,  and  are  now  seen  to  stand,  for  wit,  wisdom, 
and  beauty  of  form,  as  the  contribution  to  essay  writing 
of  the  greatest  of  our  literary  critics.  The  earlier  inter 
ests  of  the  "Biglow  Papers"  gradually  gave  way  to  the 
interests,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  scholar,  on  the  other, 
of  the  student  of  affairs  social  and  political,  English  and 
American. 

The  year  of  Lowell's  second  marriage  was  important 
for  another  reason.  In  the  spring  of  that  year  he  was  one 
of  a  group  of  literary  men  at  a  dinner  given  by  a  Boston 
publisher,  Mr.  Phillips;  on  that  occasion  the  advisability 
of  founding  a  magazine  which  should  represent  the  higher 
American  interests,  political,  social,  and  literary,  was  dis 
cussed.  As  a  result,  in  the  autumn  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
appeared,  with  Lowell  for  the  editor,  the  selection  being 
a  compliment  which  plainly  indicated  the  estimate  of  him 
by  his  confreres  in  letters,  —  for  Emerson,  Holmes,  Long 
fellow,  and  Motley  were  also  present  at  that  dinner,  and 
they  and  others  like  Whittier  and  Mrs.  Stowe  were  secured 
as  helpers.  For  four  years  (and  at  a  salary  which  was 
trifling  compared  with  what  the  position  would  now  com 
mand)  Lowell  gave  the  prestige  of  his  name  to  the  conduct- 
ment  of  that  periodical;  and  while  not  an  ideal  routine 


Lowell  255 

editor,  made  it  what  it  has  ever  since  remained,  —  the 
best  literary  magazine  in  the  United  States.  After  leav 
ing  it  in  1 86 1,  he  continued  to  be  closely  in  touch  with  it 
as  a  contributor;  and  from  1863  to  1872  he  was,  with 
Professor  Charles  E.  Norton,  of  Harvard,  joint  editor  of 
the  North  American  Review,  which,  founded  in  1815,  was 
the  earliest  of  the  literary  periodicals  of  distinction  in  this 
country.  Lowell's  impress  upon  American  letters  was 
the  more  marked  because  of  these  positions  of  trust. 

But  a  third  influence,  and  a  potent  one,  was  to  come 
into  the  career  of  a  man  who  had  already  done  so  much; 
the  influence  of  politics.  Lowell  was  to  be  statesman  as 
well  as  poet,  reformer,  scholar,  teacher,  and  editor.  His 
frequent  European  trips  had  brought  him  more  and  more 
of  sympathetic  insight  into  English  social  life  and  govern 
ment,  while  at  the  same  time  his  admiration  for  the  British 
had  but  deepened  his  belief  in  our  own  institutions  and 
ideals.  In  1877  President  Hayes  honored  the  nation  by 
appointing  Lowell  to  the  Spanish  ministry,  —  a  post  he 
filled  for  the  years  1877-1880.  Up  to  this  time,  Lowell 
had  had  no  thought  of  public  place,  nor  had  his  friends 
for  him.  The  life  of  the  quiet  Cambridge  professor 
hardly  seemed  the  proper  training  for  such  positions. 
Mr.  Howells  gives  a  humorous  account  of  how,  when 
another  high  foreign  mission  wyas  suggested  to  him  unoffi 
cially  as  a  possibility,  he  showed  no  interest  in  it;  but 
plaintively  remarked  that  he  should  enjoy  the  use  of  the 
library  at  Madrid.  Upon  this  hint,  the  Spanish  position 
was  tendered.  This  sounds  more  like  scholar  than  states 
man,  but  Lowell  was  to  become  a  well-nigh  ideal  diplo 
matic  representative,  as  all  the  world  now  knows;  for 
upon  being  transferred  to  England,  in  1880,  for  five  years' 


256  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

service  as  minister,  to  be  recalled  by  Cleveland,  he  ex 
hibited  at  the  court  of  St.  James  such  a  union  of  breeding, 
grace,  and  authority  as  to  make  him  our  beau  ideal  man 
of  letters  turned  diplomat,  —  one  who  has  perhaps  done 
more  to  draw  together  the  kinsmen  of  English  speech  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  than  any  other  man  we  have 
sent  to  occupy  that  high  seat  of  power.  From  this  ex 
perience  came  the  best  of  his  political  essays,  and  those 
addresses  upon  public  men  or  occasions  which  are  models 
of  their  kind. 

The  English  residence  brought  one  change  in  Lowell 
(if  it  was  indeed  a  change),  which  has  awakened  contro 
versy  bitter  and  prolonged ;  it  has  been  and  is  still  said 
that  he  became  less  a  patriotic  American,  and  learned  to 
put  an  undue  valuation  upon  English  ways  and  habits  — 
a  grave  charge  against  the  author  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers." 
Every  student  of  Lowell  must  decide  the  matter  for  him 
self,  carefully  reading  the  letters,  biographies,  reminis 
cences,  and  all  other  memorials  throwing  light  upon  his 
career.  It  is  without  doubt  true  that,  in  what  might  be 
called  social  externals,  Lowell's  long  residence  abroad 
wrought  some  change  in  the  whilom  Cambridge  professor ; 
he  became  somewhat  more  careful  in  his  dress,  more 
punctilious  in  points  of  etiquette.  This  was  natural 
enough  in  view  of  his  manner  of  living  while  in  England. 
Lowell  also  loved  the  English  historic  background,  he 
was  deeply  sympathetic  to  all  its  charm  of  tradition.  It 
may  have  seemed  to  an  occasional  American  in  the  Eng 
lish  capital,  that  he  cared  more  for  the  British  lion  than 
for  the  eagle  of  his  native  land.  Yet  again  it  is  a  fact, 
as  his  maturest  political  writings  show,  that  with  increas 
ing  study  he  came  to  see  with  clear  vision  the  defects  and 


Lowell  257 

dangers  of  the  democratic  idea  as  it  was  being  worked  out 
in  the  United  States,  —  perhaps  in  some  moods  even  to 
mistrust  it.  On  his  return  to  this  country  to  live  out  his 
last  years,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  express  in  print  his  sense 
of  our  lacks,  and  sternly  to  criticize  such  political  corrup 
tion  as  he  saw.  This  brought  upon  him  much  abuse.  But 
that  Lowell  remained  in  the  depth  of  his  nature  and  to 
the  end,  a  lover  of  his  country,  a  true  patriot,  it  is  well  to 
believe. 

He  who  criticizes  what  he  loves  for  the  sake  of  its  bet 
tering,  is  not  disloyal.  My  country  right  or  wrong,  was 
not  his  way  of  expressing  affection. 

Although  Lowell's  prose  was  so  important  in  his  middle 
and  later  life,  he  never  ceased  entirely  from  verse.  In 
deed,  the  volumes  "  Under  the  Willows  "  and  "  The  Cathe 
dral,"  published  in  1869,  contain,  the  former,  some  of  his 
choicest  lyrics,  and  the  latter,  one  of  the  noblest  of  his 
longer  pieces,  perhaps  the  finest  of  his  culture  poems, 
save  the  "  Sir  Launfal,"  and  illustrative  of  the  way  the 
old-world  beauty  bore  in  upon  him  to  stimulate  his  soul  to 
song.  "  The  Cathedral  "  is  a  profoundly  thoughtful  mod 
ern  poem  in  depicting  the  mind  of  one  who  is  still  sensi 
tive  to  the  beauty  of  the  older  faith,  while  well  aware  that 
the  dogmas  associated  with  it  have  passed  or  are  passing ; 
and  who  finds  peace  in  a  broader  belief  acceptable  to  both 
head  and  heart.  A  little  earlier,  too,  in  1865,  at  the  close 
of  the  war,  —  the  great  struggle  in  which  three  of  Lowell's 
nephews  had  fallen,  — he  was  called  upon  to  write  a  poem 
to  be  read  at  Harvard  in  commemoration  of  the  heroes 
who  had  given  their  lives  to  the  cause  ;  and  the  lofty 
"  Commemoration  Ode  "  was  the  result.  This  great  chant 
still  marks  high  water  for  American  patriotic  poetry.  It 


258  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

is  for  us  what  Tennyson's  Duke  of  Wellington  Ode  is 
for  England.  Lowell  was  here  confronted  with  a  severe 
test  of  his  poetic  powers.  He  wrote  the  ode  under  great 
pressure,  and  for  that  reason  the  first  draft  came  like  a 
very  inspiration;  as  a  whole,  the  production  was  uneven, 
but  that  part  which  invocates  Lincoln  as  the  first  Ameri 
can,  and  the  splendid  burst  at  the  end,  beginning,  — 

Oh  Beautiful,  my  country, 

rise  to  a  height  rarely  attained  even  by  the  major  men. 
As  an  incentive  to  a  sound  patriotism  (let  alone  its  value 
as  verse)  it  should  be  read  by  all  good  Americans  at  least 
once  a  year.  It  begins  with  something  of  academic  ele 
gance;  but  as  it  proceeds,  it  warms,  deepens,  and  quickens 
as  the  vital  theme  takes  hold  upon  the  singer. 

The  last  years  of  Lowell's  long  and  notable  life  were 
passed  in  the  neighborhood  of  Boston,  where  his  married 
daughter  had  a  home,  and  at  Elm  wood  —  the  final  two 
years,  when  his  health  was  fast  declining,  entirely  at  the 
Cambridge  home.  It  was  his  habit  so  long  as  possible 
to  spend  the  summers  in  rural  England,  and  this  he  did 
up  to  1889,  loyal  to  the  end  to  the  American's  "other 
home."  His  wife  died  in  1885,  and  this  loss,  together 
with  that  of  other  friends  and  his  failing  physical  condi 
tion,  made  these  closing  years  comparatively  dark.  But 
to  the  last  he  kept  his  intellectual  vigor,  his  inexhaustible 
vivacity  and  wit,  and  when  Lowell's  "Letters"  appeared 
after  he  was  gone,  a  new  sense  of  his  remarkable  gifts  was 
obtained,  —  those  "Letters"  being  unsurpassed  in  Ameri 
can  literature.  His  death  occurred  at  Cambridge  in  1891, 
and  how  lonely  looked  Elmwood  without  its  master  to  the 
eyes  of  an  old  friend,  may  be  learned  in  a  fellow-poet's 


Lowell  259 

noble  tribute,  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich's  eloquent  elegiac 
entitled  "Elmwood,"  written  directly  after  Lowell's  pass 
ing. 

As  we  have  seen,  Lowell  the  poet  did  many  things. 
He  wrote  charmingly  of  nature  and  caught  not  only  her 
outward  semblance  but  her  subtle  spiritual  meaning.  He 
was  special  poet  laureate  of  June  and  knew  the  birds  and 
trees  and  flowers  of  his  beloved  New  England  as  well  as 
Byrant  or  Whittier. 

One  example  may  be  given  :  — 

TO  THE  DANDELION 

Dear  common  flower,  that  grow'st  beside  the  way, 
Fringing  the  dusty  road  with  harmless  gold, 

First  pledge  of  blithesome  May, 

Which  children  pluck,  and,  full  of  pride  uphold, 

High-hearted  buccaneers,  o'erjoyed  that  they 
An  Eldorado  in  the  grass  have  found, 
Which  not  the  rich  earth's  ample  round 

May  match  in  wealth,  thou  art  more  dear  to  me 

Than  all  the  prouder  summer  blooms  may  be. 

Gold  such  as  thine  ne'er  drew  the  Spanish  prow 
Through  the  primeval  hush  of  Indian  seas, 

Nor  wrinkled  the  lean  brow 

Of  age,  to  rob  the  lover's  heart  of  ease ; 

'Tis  the  Spring's  largess,  which  she  scatters  now 
To  rich  and  poor  alike,  with  lavish  hand, 
Though  most  hearts  never  understand 

To  take  it  at  God's  value,  but  pass  by 

The  offered  wealth  with  unrewarded  eye. 

Thou  art  my  tropics  and  mine  Italy ; 

To  look  at  thee  unlocks  a  warmer  clime ; 
The  eyes  thou  givest  me 

Are  in  the  heart,  and  heed  not  space  or  time : 
Not  in  mid  June  the  golden-cuirassed  bee 


260  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Feels  a.  more  summer-like  warm  ravishment 

In  the  white  lily's  breezy  tent, 
His  fragrant  Sybaris,  than  I,  when  first 
From  the  dark  green  thy  yellow  circles  burst. 

Then  think  I  of  deep  shadows  on  the  grass, 
Of  meadows  where  in  sun  the  cattle  graze, 

Where,  as  the  breezes  pass, 
The  gleaming  rushes  lean  a  thousand  ways, 

Of  leaves  that  slumber  in  a  cloudy  mass, 
Or  whiten  in  the  wind,  of  waters  blue 
That  from  the  distance  sparkle  through 

Some  woodland  gap,  and  of  a  sky  above, 

Where  one  white  cloud  like  a  stray  lamb  doth  move. 

My  childhood's  earliest  thoughts  are  linked  with  thee ; 

The  sight  of  thee  calls  back  the  robin's  song, 
Who,  from  the  dark  old  tree 

Beside  the  door,  sang  clearly  all  day  long, 
And  I,  secure  in  childish  piety, 

Listened  as  if  I  heard  an  angel  sing 

With  news  from  heaven,  which  he  could  bring 
Fresh  every  day  to  my  untainted  ears 
When  birds  and  flowers  and  I  were  happy  peers. 

How  like  a  prodigal  doth  nature  seem, 

When  thou,  for  all  thy  gold,  so  common  art ! 
Thou  teachest  me  to  deem 

More  sacredly  of  every  human  heart, 
Since  each  reflects  in  joy  its  scanty  gleam 

Of  heaven,  and  could  some  wondrous  secret  show, 

Did  we  but  pay  the  love  we  owe, 
And  with  a  child's  undoubting  wisdom  look 
On  all  these  living  pages  of  God's  book. 

He  could,  too,  write  poems  of  patriotism  in  the  dialect 
of  the  countryman,  or  in  the  classic  idiom  of  the  "  Com- 
memoratitn  Ode."  His  Muse  found  inspiration  in  the 


Lowell  261 

old-world  lands,  in  the  historical  scenes  or  myths  of  long 
ago  —  witness  such  poems  as  "  Rhcecus,"  "Columbus," 
"  The  Legend  of  Brittany,"  "  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal," 
and  "  The  Cathedral."  Or  he  could  voice  the  homely  and 
domestic  sorrows,  as  in  "  The  Changeling,"  "  A  Requiem," 
"  She  Came  and  Went,"  and  other  favorites.  Thinking 
of  his  work  in  all  its  range  and  variety,  one  feels  that  it  is 
that  of  a  writer  with  a  genius  for  poetic  expression,  who 
might  have  done  still  more  had  he  followed  the  Muse  with 
absolute  devotion,  —  since  she  is  a  jealous  mistress. 
Lowell  never  entirely  mastered  his  material  or  the  poetic 
medium ;  his  rhythms  are  somewhat  uncertain,  he  was 
careless  as  to  polish,  and  some  of  his  verse  work  could 
easily  be  bettered  technically.  He  always  felt  that  with 
fewer  distractions  he  might  have  rendered  a  more  perfect 
service  to  song.  It  is  with  this  in  mind  that  the  lover  of 
American  poetry  almost  begrudges  Lowell  his  brilliant 
accomplishments  in  other  fields,  since  they  took  him  from 
his  poetry.  But  as  it  is,  whatever  the  inequality  of  his 
verse,  it  has  the  earmarks  of  a  truly  called  poet.  His  gift 
for  expression  at  its  best,  for  the  idiomatic  mastery  of 
English  speech  emotionally  surcharged  by  the  imagination, 
was  more  original  than  that  of  Longfellow  or  Whittier ; 
there  was  more  passion  and  power  in  his  work.  Long 
fellow  and  Lowell  were  the  closest  of  friends  in  life ;  one 
was  gentle,  sweet,  and  urbane,  the  other  impetuous,  eager, 
and  strong;  the  contrast  in  character,  which  perhaps 
drew  them  together,  may  be  seen  in  their  poetic  work  as 
well. 

I  have  already  referred  to  Lowell  as  our  greatest  critic. 
No  man  has  given  us  literary  criticism  of  such  authority, 
distinction,  and  charm,  so  revelatory  of  a  first-class,  origi- 


262  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

nal  mind,  perfectly  at  home  alike  in  its  medium  of  lan 
guage  and  in  its  chosen  theme.  The  scholar  is  there,  the 
traveler  in  the  literature  of  all  lands  and  times,  but  quite 
as  much  the  man,  the  American,  the  lover  of  garden 
growths,  and  of  New  England's  human  oddities.  Look 
at  a  typical  volume  like  "  My  Study  Windows,"  and  notice 
how  Lowell  writes,  now  of  Chaucer  or  Dryden,  now  of 
"My  Garden  Acquaintances,"  or  "A  Good  Word  for 
Winter."  To  the  very  last,  he  made  whatever  topic  he 
touched  vital  with  his  own  rich  personality ;  in  the  post 
humous  work  on  Elizabethan  dramatists  he  fairly  bubbles 
over  on  every  page  with  the  most  delightful  humor,  and 
deals  with  a  subject  likely  to  be  dull  enough  in  most  keep 
ings,  with  a  startlingly  unconventional  felicity,  that  at  the 
same  time  never  transcends  good  taste,  and  is  freighted 
with  more  than  the  wisdom  of  the  schools.  In  the  famous 
paper  "On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners,"  the 
legitimate  indignation  of  the  American  who  resents  the 
unfair  treatment  of  those  beyond  our  borders,  has  never 
been  vented  with  such  wit,  satire,  and  eloquence ;  the  satire 
is  all  the  keener  because  of  the  fun  of  it  and  the  perfect 
temper.  It  is  critical  of  our  defects,  too,  while  apparently 
bent  solely  upon  criticizing  the  foreigners.  It  has  a  flavor 
of  the  soil,  a  native  smack  which  makes  it  relishable  for 
ever,  an  undying  piece  of  American  literature.  And  so 
with  other  essays  not  a  few.  And  in  the  addresses  and 
political  deliverances,  like  the  fine  paper  on  Democracy, 
one  is  aware  of  a  powerful  mind  at  work  upon  large  things, 
at  once  masculine  and  happy  in  its  manner  of  presentation. 
As  a  critic,  Lowell  uses  the  more  old-fashioned  method  of 
leisurely  discursive  handling  of  his  subject,  egoistic,  desul 
tory,  and  delightful,  instead  of  coldly  objective  and  scien- 


Lowell  263 

tific,  according  to  the  laboratory  method  of  latter-day 
criticism.  But  the  subjective  method,  the  free  giving  of 
personality,  when  that  personality  is  a  Lowell  or  Holmes, 
a  Charles  Lamb  or  Stevenson,  a  Howells  or  Jules  Lemaitre, 
will  always  be  loved  by  readers,  and  in  the  highest  degree 
stimulative.  When  Lowell  tells  us  about  Pope  or  Dante 
or  Marlowe,  we  know  we  are  getting  a  first-hand  impres 
sion,  not  the  application  of  an  impersonal  rule;  it  is 
better  to  show  a  liking  in  a  fascinating  way  than  to  ex 
hibit  no  end  of  skill  in  waving  an  infallible  metewand 
over  literary  products. 

James  Russell  Lowell  then,  being  a  great  personality, 
became  the  most  distinctive  critic  the  United  States  has 
yet  produced,  and  an  essayist  of  the  rank  which  brings 
him  into  favorable  comparison  with  the  best  in  other  lands. 
His  reputation  since  his  death  has  solidified.  He  is  not 
likely  to  lose  with  the  coming  years.  His  part  was  an 
important  one  in  those  days  when  the  Republic  was 
shaken  to  its  foundations,  and  reshaped  to  better 
things.  In  that  remarkable  circle  of  New  England 
thinkers,  scholars,  and  men  of  letters,  he  makes  the  im 
pression  as  does  no  other  of  astonishingly  diverse  gifts 
and  powers,  and  stands  forth  in  his  day  and  generation  as 
America's  most  finished  citizen  and  man  of  letters. 


CHAPTER  XII 

WHITMAN 

THE  most  unconventional  personality  in  American  liter 
ature  is  Walt  Whitman,  the  good  gray  poet  of  Camden 
town.  In  many  ways  he  is  unique  both  as  man  and  writer. 
The  very  fact  that  he  is  universally  addressed  as  Walt 
(rather  than  as  Walter,  his  full  Christian  name),  is  sym 
bolic  of  the  comradery  suggested  by  his  life  and  work,  and 
carried  out  in  his  appearance :  the  slouch  hat,  the  flannel 
shirt  open  at  the  neck,  and  general  swagger  of  the  man  of 
the  road,  and  spokesman  for  the  Commonalty.  His  career, 
picturesque  in  itself,  exhibits  strange  contrasts ;  for  he 
has  been  in  his  time  at  once  a  literary  cult,  and  the  most 
despised  and  rejected  of  all  makers  of  American  litera 
ture  ;  regarded  by  many  as  a  fraud  or  a  freak,  yet  hailed 
by  those  in  authority  both  here  and  abroad  as  the  master 
of  a  new  message,  the  apostle  of  the  creed  of  the  common 
place,  —  and  still  looked  up  to  by  a  lusty  band  of  disciples 
led  by  John  Burroughs,  as  a  literary  god  and  a  great  origi 
nal  force  in  modern  American  life. 

Any  estimate  of  Whitman  is  upon  a  less  solid  basis  than 
that  of  the  leaders  already  studied ;  there  is  more  room 
for  difference  of  opinion.  No  one  in  his  senses  can  ques 
tion  the  place  of  Poe  or  Hawthorne  or  Emerson.  But  in 
the  case  of  Whitman,  his  art  —  or  lack  of  art  —  offers  fair 
prey  for  literary  societies  to  discuss,  pro  and  con,  and  his 

264 


Whitman  265 

theory  of  Americanism  is  naturally  an  object  of  violent 
attack  and  as  violent  defense  —  with  something  to  say  on 
either  side.  But  it  is  coming  to  be  generally  conceded 
that  Whitman,  for  good  or  bad,  is  a  force  of  real  signifi 
cance  in  our  national  development,  and  the  study  of  our 
democratic  ideals.  There  is  nothing  eccentric  in  group 
ing  him  with  our  literary  leaders. 

He  was  born  the  same  year  as  Lowell  and  died  a  year 
later,  in  1892 ;  but  what  a  contrast  in  other  respects!  We 
turn  from  the  quiet  culture  of  Cambridge  to  a  Long  Island 
farm,  where  Whitman's  folk  were  hard-working  descend 
ants  of  English  and  Dutch  stock,  with  a  dash  of  Quaker 
to  gentle  it  withal.  Whitman's  father  was  a  carpenter,  his 
mother  a  Dutch- American  girl,  Van  Velsor  by  name,  a 
healthy  outdoor  body  much  loved  of  her  son,  as  many 
references  show.  She  was  a  "daily  and  daring"  horse 
back  rider,  in  her  younger  days.  The  Whitmans  had  been 
Long  Island  people  for  some  generations;  the  poet's  grand 
father  had  carried  on  his  farming  with  the  help  of  a  dozen 
slaves.  This  particular  branch  of  the  family  came  from 
Massachusetts,  "  the  mother  hive  of  the  New  Englanders 
of  the  name,"  hailing  from  a  seventeenth-century  English 
man  who  had  settled  in  Weymouth. 

The  boy  Walt  was  given  only  a  common-school  educa 
tion,  but  he  seems  to  have  assimilated  good  literature 
through  the  very  pores  of  his  skin,  and  the  difficulty  in 
the  way  of  getting  hold  of  good  books  only  made  him  the 
more  eager  for  them.  He  was  an  out-of-door  sort  of  fel 
low  from  the  first,  and  as  he  himself  tells  it,  along  Long 
Island's  seashores  "  in  the  presence  of  outdoor  influences, 
I  went  over  thoroughly  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  and 
absorbed  .  .  .  Shakespeare,  Ossian,  the  best  translated 


266  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

versions  I  could  get  of  Homer,  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  the 
old  German  Nibelungen,  the  Ancient  Hindoo  poems,  and 
one  or  two  other  masterpieces,  Dante's  among  them.  As 
it  happened,  I  read  the  latter  mostly  in  an  old  wood." 

This  is  a  sort  of  cross-lots  cut  to  culture.  But  let  it  be 
said  here  that  to  read  world  literature  like  this  outdoors 
at  the  most  impressionable  time  of  life,  is  an  experience 
likely  never  to  be  matched  in  its  effect.  It  is  only  the 
great  writers  who  can  stand  the  test  of  outdoor  reading ; 
truth  mates  with  truth  there,  and  the  second-class  folk 
shrink  to  their  true  dimensions,  and  have  a  feeble  and 
hollow  sound.  One  enjoys  thinking  of  the  young  Walt 
thus  roaming  his  beloved  Paumanok  (the  Indian  name  for 
Long  Island)  hobnobbing  with  fishermen  and  farmers, 
learning  country  ways,  looking  at  country  sights,  and 
always  within  reach  of  the  huge  old  sea  he  was  to  chant 
in  more  than  one  strain  of  power.  The  "  growth  stages " 
of  Whitman  from  infancy  to  manhood  were  so  identified 
with  Long  Island  that  he  declared  himself  he  felt  as  if  he 
had  incorporated  it.  "I  roamed,  as  boy  and  man,  and 
have  lived  in  nearly  all  parts,  from  Brooklyn  to  Montauk." 
He  was  "in  the  atmosphere  of  many  wrecks."  He  speared 
eels  through  the  ice,  gathered  sea  gulls'  eggs,  dug  clams 
in  barefoot  freedom,  hayed  in  the  sedge  meadows.  He 
footed  down  to  Coney  Island  (when  the  sound  of  the 
name  meant  segregation)  for  a  sea  bath,  and  then  raced 
over  the  hard  beach,  and,  naked  as  he  was,  declaimed 
Homer  and  Shakespeare  to  the  surf  and  the  sea  gulls. 
An  unconventional  sort  of  education  this,  but  very  likely 
to  produce  results  once  in  a  while. 

Then  he  received  the  impression  of  a  city  early,  for  the 
family  lived  in  Brooklyn  from  his  fifth  to  his  ninth  years ; 


Whitman  267 

and  Walt  was  a  boy  in  a  lawyer's  office,  where  he  got  some 
instruction  in  handwriting  and  composition,  and  had  access 
to  a  big  circulating  library,  —  and  plunged  into  the  "  Ara 
bian  Nights,"  Walter  Scott,  and  "the  fair  fields  of  old 
romance"  in  general.  Next  came  an  apprenticeship  to  a 
printer  in  a  newspaper  office,  The  Long  Island  Patriot. 
His  family  moved  back  to  the  Paumanok  country  when 
he  was  along  in  the  teens,  and  Walt  went  between  town 
and  farm,  active  in  debating  societies,  fond  of  the  theater, 
and  of  the  city  panoramas  as  one  sees  them  on  ferryboats, 
from  omnibus  tops,  or  in  below-ground  resorts;  but  quite 
as  fond  of  his  home,  his  mother,  and  the  lusty  old  sea. 
Then  at  eighteen  he  did  some  school-teaching  in  Long 
Island,  "  boar  ding  around"  the  while,  and  he  says  this 
last  was  one  of  his  best  experiences  for  its  revelations  of 
human  nature,  —  its  glimpses  behind  the  scenes  of  com 
mon  humanity.  The  remark  is  very  typical  of  Whitman, 
for  all  his  days  (until  crippled  and  unable  to  wander  and 
watch  the  human  passion  play),  he  was  a  wonderful  ob 
server  of  life,  faring,  afoot  and  free,  untrammeled  by  any 
of  the  usual  restrictions  of  society,  over  the  native  land  he 
loved,  as  a  kind  of  inspired  reporter  and  tramp,  whose 
notebook  jottings  turned  out  to  be  poems.  He  had  a 
passion  for  life  in  the  mass,  in  the  rough ;  the  obscure 
dramas  of  humanity,  as  of  literature,  attracted  him  most. 
He  has  told  of  the  way  he  haunted  ferryboats,  knowing 
all  the  pilots  and  loving  the  bustle,  the  sight  and  smell  of 
it,  "inimitable,  streaming,  never-failing,  living  poems." 
In  the  same  fashion  on  the  top  of  a  Broadway  bus  he 
would  chum  with  the  drivers,  who  spun  yarns  for  him, 
"the  most  vivid,"  he  declares ;  and  watch  the  human  tide 
go  by,  riding  the  whole  length  of  the  street  by  day  and 


268  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

night.  The  comradery  of  Whitman's  verse  is  honest ;  it  is 
but  the  reflection  of  his  life  for  many  years.  He  tells  us 
too  of  his  theater  going  and  opera  going,  —  for  music 
became  a  passion  with  him  as  well  as  the  histrionic  art. 
Whitman,  in  a  characteristic  passage  of  the  prose  book 
"  Specimen  Days "  (in  which  much  of  his  early  life  is 
vividly  chronicled)  sums  up  three  main  influences  which 
were  formative  of  his  character :  the  Dutch  mother  stock 
along  with  the  English-derived  willfulness  ;  "  the  combina 
tion  of  my  Long  Island  birth  spot,  seashores,  childhood 
scenes,  absorptions,  with  teeming  Brooklyn  and  New 
York";  and  his  experiences  in  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War. 

From  teaching,  Whitman  turned  to  newspaper  work; 
by  the  time  he  was  twenty-one  he  was  publishing  a  news 
paper  at  Huntington,  Long  Island,  and  from  this  up  to 
the  war  his  life  was  that  of  a  roving  printer,  writer,  and 
editor ;  among  his  newspaper  connections  were  the  Brook 
lyn  Daily  Eagle  and  the  New  Orleans  Daily  Crescent. 
So  early  as  1849,  wnen  he  was  thirty,  we  see  him  jour 
neying  leisurely  through  the  West  and  South,  and  return 
ing  by  the  Great  Lakes  and  Canada ;  this  trip  of  eight 
thousand  miles,  much  of  it  on  foot,  added  to  his  studies 
of  human  nature  already  made  nearer  home.  No  man  in 
the  history  of  American  literature  entered  so  vitally  and 
broadly  into  democratic  relations  with  his  fellow  Ameri 
cans  as  did  Walt  Whitman ;  he  mingled  with  plain  men 
and  women  everywhere,  folk  earning  their  living  in  many 
a  hand-soiling  indoor  craft,  or  getting  their  bread  under 
the  sun  and  in  the  rain  with  the  sweat  of  their  brow.  He 
was  hail-fellow-well-met  with  them,  and  always  he  jotted 
down  his  impressions  —  to  be  printed  eventually  in 


Whitman  269 

"  Specimen  Days  "  or  to  be  incorporated  in  "  Leaves  of 
Grass."  Through  this  part  of  his  life  and  until  well  after 
the  war  years,  Whitman  had  superb  health;  he  was  a 
hale,  rugged  young  man  emanating  wholesome  good  cheer 
and  throwing  a  good  luck  !  to  every  one  that  passed. 

For  some  years  now  Whitman  lived  in  New  York  and 
Brooklyn ;  a  familiar  figure  on  the  streets,  in  the  hotels 
and  places  of  amusement,  dropping  into  Pfaf's  Broadway 
Restaurant  for  a  glass  of  beer  and  a  talk  with  the  litte"ra- 
teurs,  or  at  Niblo's  to  hear  Charlotte  Cushman  or  the 
elder  Booth,  or  going  down  to  Castle  Garden  to  hear 
Jenny  Lind.  The  theater  and  opera  were  a  valuable  part 
of  Whitman's  education ;  he  testifies  that,  as  boy  and 
young  man,  he  had  seen  all  Shakespeare's  dramas,  "  read 
ing  them  carefully  the  day  beforehand."  Meanwhile  all 
along  he  was  writing  scraps  for  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  his 
unique  magnum  opus  of  poetry;  by  1855 — he  was  now 
thirty-six  —  he  began  to  put  it  to  press  himself  at  the  job 
printing  office  of  friends ;  literally  printing  his  own  first 
book,  as  Kipling  did  his.  Concerning  it,  he  makes  this 
pregnant  note :  "  I  had  great  trouble  in  leaving  out  the 
stock  poetical  touches  "  —  an  unconscious  self-criticism  ! 

The  war  brought  a  change,  stirring  experiences  for 
Whitman.  His  brother  George  was  an  officer  in  the  Fifty- 
first  New  York  Volunteers,  and  at  news  of  his  being 
wounded  at  Fredericksburg,  Walt  hurried  to  Virginia ;  and 
then  began  his  several  years'  work  as  an  army  nurse.  He 
spent  the  time  between  Washington  and  the  Southern 
battlefields ;  visiting  the  sick,  supplying  them  with  food, 
writing  materials,  homely  comforts  of  all  kinds  ;  writing 
home  letters  to  sweethearts  whose  lovers  lay  a-dying ;  read 
ing  the  Bible  to  one,  easing  the  posture  or  dressing  the 


270  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

wound  of  another,  —  doing  God's  work  as  truly  as  ever 
did  soldier  on  the  tented  field.  The  grim  horror  and 
hideousness  of  war  have  never  been  more  vividly  described 
than  in  the  graphic  etchings  of  "  Specimen  Days."  But 
through  and  under  it  all  surges  a  great  moral  principle, 
an  august  spectacle  of  democracy  in  the  throes  of  a  new 
birth.  Two  great  spectacles  he  thought  the  war  fur 
nished  :  "The  general,  voluntary,  armed  upheaval,  and 
the  peaceful  and  harmonious  disbanding  of  the  armies  in 
the  summer  of  1865." 

Whitman's  passionate  admiration  for  Lincoln  —  one 
strong  personality  going  out  to  another  —  grew  with  the 
acquaintance  begotten  of  these  years.  When  the  news 
came  of  the  assassination,  the  Whitmans  were  together  in 
Brooklyn.  The  mother  prepared  breakfast  as  usual,  the 
other  meals  in  due  course;  "but,"  says  Whitman,  "not  a 
mouthful  was  eaten  all  day  by  either  of  us.  We  each 
drank  half  a  cup  of  coffee  ;  that  was  all.  Little  was  said. 
We  got  every  newspaper,  morning  and  evening,  and  the 
frequent  extras  of  that  period,  and  passed  them  silently 
to  each  other."  The  repression,  simplicity,  immense  im 
plication  of  dumb  anguish  in  this  are  very  affecting.  Walt 
Whitman  was  a  patriot ;  his  life  and  his  work  were  twins 
out  of  a  well-nigh  maternal  love  for  country. 

Whitman's  services  as  an  army  nurse  were  recognized 
by  a  government  clerkship,  from  which  he  was  removed 
because  an  official  objected  to  "Leaves  of  Grass";  but 
soon  secured  another  position  and  was  in  Uncle  Sam's 
employ  in  the  Interior  Department  from  1865  to  1874. 
The  strain  of  the  war  experiences  had  sapped  his  vigorous 
health,  and  in  1874  a  partial  paralysis  compelled  him  to 
withdraw  to  Camden,  New  Jersey,  where,  with  occasional 


Whitman  271 

trips  to  the  West  and  New  England,  he  passed  the  re 
mainder  of  his  days,  —  a  period  of  nearly  twenty  years,  — 
for  he  lived  till  1892.  During  this  long  season  of  semi- 
invalidism,  he  was  steadily  putting  into  his  prose  and 
poetry  his  sense  of  the  elemental  effects  of  his  beloved 
United  States  and  the  great  dramatic  shows  of  its  teeming 
population.  He  declared  that  now,  in  his  crippled  condi 
tion,  he  appreciated  as  never  before  the  foot-free  life  of 
the  river  fronts,  the  plains  and  the  woods,  and  could  chant 
of  them ;  he  had  a  pagan  relish  of  the  great  god  Pan.  So 
late  as  1879  he  went  westward  to  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
He  lectured  now  and  then  on  such  a  theme  as  Lincoln ; 
he  visited  John  Burroughs  at  his  home  on  the  Hudson 
River  and  once  made  the  trip  to  Boston,  where  he  went 
out  to  Cambridge  to  call  on  Longfellow  and  to  Concord  to 
see  Emerson.  Much  as  Whitman  scorned  in  his  own 
work  the  traditional  artistic  restraints  of  poetry,  he  had  a 
sincere  appreciation  of  the  work  of  the  major  New  Eng 
land  poets,  like  Longfellow,  Whittier,  and  Byrant,  and  to 
Emerson  he  was  of  course  drawn  by  bonds  of  gratitude 
as  well  as  of  admiration. 

Whitman  lived  in  the  plainest  fashion  in  a  humble  little 
house  in  Camden,  where  he  was  often  visited  by  admirers 
and  notables.  When,  with  increasing  infirmity,  he  could 
not  use  his  limbs,  he  was  wheeled  into  the  sun  and  air  by 
an  attendant  and  so  was  to  the  last  a  man  of  the  open. 
The  returns  from  his  books,  never  large,  were  insufficient 
to  maintain  him,  and  he  was  helped  during  his  last  years 
by  the  free-will  offerings  of  friends  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic ;  for,  as  has  been  said,  Whitman  has  never 
lacked  admirers  ardent  to  the  point  of  bigotry.  Since  his 
death  a  Walt  Whitman  Fellowship  has  been  established 


272  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

for  the  express  purpose  of  spreading  an  appreciation  of 
him  and  his  works. 

The  poet  drew  the  design  for  his  tomb,  which  may  be 
seen  at  Camden ;  a  massive,  simple,  rough-hewn  stone 
affair  set  into  a  hillside  in  the  midst  of  a  wood.  Whitman 
had  lived  to  be  nearly  seventy-three  and  his  appearance 
had  long  been  patriarchal.  The  title  of  "  the  good  gray 
poet,"  given  by  one  of  his  warmest  friends  and  defenders, 
W.  D.  O 'Conner,  refers  to  the  fact  that  his  hair  turned 
early. 

Any  review  of  Whitman's  life  begets  both  admiration 
and  affection  for  him.  Unconventional  as  he  was,  dis 
reputably  bohemian  as  his  habits  and  associates  may  seem 
to  those  who  pay  close  heed  to  social  laws,  Whitman 
makes  the  impression  of  an  utterly  wholesome,  robust, 
large-natured  man  of  noble  character.  The  invariable 
personal  effect  of  him  was  one  of  sweet  cleanliness  and 
fine  manhood.  I  remember  hearing  Mr.  F.  B.  Sanborn 
of  Concord  say  that  he  never  received  from  any  man  such 
a  sense  of  the  radiated  magnetism  of  essential  health  and 
goodness  as  from  Whitman.  It  is  important  to  realize 
this  of  Whitman  the  man,  since  so  much  in  Whitman  the 
writer  might  mislead  the  reader  to  another  conclusion. 

Whitman's  writings  began  with  the  famous  little  thin, 
quarto  anonymous  edition  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  poorly 
printed  by  the  author  in  1855  ;  it  was  quite  unattractive 
in  style,  but  had  a  good  steel  engraving  of  the  poet  for 
frontispiece,  showing  him  in  the  now  familiar  neglige".  It 
was  put  on  sale  in  Brooklyn  and  New  York  and  not  a  copy 
sold,  the  two  bookstores  that  had  copies  finally  requesting 
that  they  be  removed.  The  only  attention  the  book  drew 
was  that  of  ridicule.  Then  —  a  conspicuous  example  of 


Whitman  273 

the  value  of  a  word  in  time  —  Emerson  wrote  the  author  a 
brief  letter  in  which  he  praised  the  curious  book,  —  and 
before  long  the  edition  was  sold  out.  Whitman's  feeling 
for  Emerson  can  be  imagined.  The  chief  work  of  Whit 
man's  literary  life  was  to  prepare  the  successive,  aug 
mented  editions  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  which  appeared 
from  time  to  time  up  to  1882.  His  prose  works,  of  im 
mense  autobiographic  value  for  the  light  they  threw  on 
his  poetry  and  his  aims  and  ideals,  appeared  from  1865  to 
1888  under  the  titles  "  Drum  Taps,"  "  Democratic  Vistas," 
"  Memoranda  during  the  War,"  "  Specimen  Days  and 
Collect,"  and  "  November  Boughs."  His  complete  works 
may  now  be  had  in  two  large,  handsome,  illustrated  vol 
umes,  one  each  for  the  prose  and  poetry,  published  by 
Small,  Maynard  &  Company  of  Boston. 

Whitman's  works  have  never  sold  largely  among  gen 
eral  readers.  His  appeal  has  been  to  the  thoughtful  few, 
his  backing  has  been  that  of  quality  rather  than  that  of 
quantity.  From  the  start,  he  won  choice  critical  approval 
and  that  approval  has  slowly  spread,  until  now,  a  decade 
after  his  death,  it  is  safe  to  say  that,  whatever  one's  pri 
vate  opinion  may  be  of  him,  his  works  will  be  placed  in 
every  well-regulated  library  as  a  recognized  part  of  Ameri 
can  literature.  His  message  was  so  unique  and  his  man 
ner  of  giving  it  so  bizarre,  that  even  among  critics  there 
are  not  a  few  who  never  entirely  accepted  him ;  some, 
indeed,  who  never  accepted  him  at  all.  Up  to  his  death 
and  for  years  before  it,  leading  magazines  to  which  he 
would  have  been  glad  to  contribute  would  have  none  of 
his  verse.  In  this  sense  he  was  never  a  popular  poet. 
Yet,  to  counterbalance  this,  he  affected  such  Englishmen 
as  Symonds,  Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  Stevenson  —  to 
T 


274  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

mention  only  a  few  —  in  such  wise  that  he  came  as  a 
revelation,  which  led  them  in  some  instances  to  recon 
struct  their  lives.  In  fact,  there  was  a  Walt  Whitman 
cult  in  England  long  before  there  was  any  general  Ameri 
can  appreciation  of  him.  No  doubt  his  cause  has  been 
somewhat  injured  by  the  excesses  of  indiscriminate  adu 
lation  on  the  part  of  his  self-elected  disciples.  The 
Whitmanite  dyed  in  the  bone  is  a  little  inclined  to  be 
obstreperous,  to  have  a  chip  on  his  shoulder. 

The  first  question  to  ask  is,  What  was  he  trying  to  do  ? 
Next,  How  did  he  do  it?  As  to  to  his  intention,  he  himself 
has  told  us  of  it :  "The  theory  of  my  'Leaves  of  Grass' 
is,  to  thoroughly  possess  the  mind,  memory,  cognizance 
of  the  author  himself,  with  everything  beforehand  —  a  full 
armory  of  concrete  actualities,  observations,  humanity, 
past  poems,  ballads,  facts,  technique,  war  and  peace, 
politics,  north  and  south,  east  and  west,  nothing  too  large 
or  too  small,  the  sciences  as  far  as  possible  —  and  above 
all  America  and  the  present  —  after  and  out  of  which  the 
subject  of  the  poem,  long  or  short,  has  been  invariably 
turned  over  to  his  Emotionality,  even  Personality,  to  be 
shaped  thence ;  and  emerges  strictly  therefrom,  with  all 
its  merits  and  demerits  on  its  head.  Every  page  of  my 
attempt  at  poetic  utterance,  therefore,  smacks  of  the  living 
physical  identity,  date,  environment,  individuality,  prob 
ably  beyond  anything  known,  and  in  style  often  offensive 
to  the  conventions." 

This  may  not  seem  over-plain  in  meaning.  In  other 
words,  Whitman  believed  it  worth  while  to  sing  of 
the  life,  physical,  mental,  and  moral,  of  an  individual 
(himself,  because  he  knew  no  other  entity  so  well),  set  hi 
the  environment  of  these  United  States,  with  a  greater 


^Whitman  275 

frankness  and  fullness  than  had  ever  been  attempted. 
The  value  of  this  should  be  a  complete  human  document 
and  a  revivified  sense  of  what  our  splendid  democratic 
experiment  in  the  new  world  really  meant  for  the  present 
and  the  future.  Surely  this  is  a  bold  ambition  and  one 
of  large  conception,  implying  an  innovator,  a  man  of  strik 
ing  force  of  character.  As  an  inevitable  condition,  his 
purpose  involves  an  intense  egoism,  —  not  egotism.  Hear 
the  first  utterance  in  "Leaves  of  Grass":  — 

ONE'S-SELF  I  SING 

One's-self  I  sing,  a  simple  separate  person, 

Yet  utter  the  word  Democratic,  the  word  En-Masse. 

Of  Physiology  from  top  to  toe  I  sing, 

Not  physiognomy  alone  nor  brain  alone,  is  worthy  for  the 

Muse  say  the  Form  complete  is  worthier  far, 
The  Female  equally  with  the  Male  I  sing. 

Of  Life  immense  in  passion,  pulse,  and  power, 

Cheerful,  for  freest  action  formed  under  the  laws  divine, 

The  Modern  Man  I  sing. 

Whitman,  then,  had  a  message,  and  a  remarkable  one. 
He  had  intense  convictions  (always  the  bed  rock  of  great 
poetry),  and  an  adamantine  courage  in  carrying  them 
through,  such  as  would  be  admirable  even  in  the  case  of 
failure.  By  what  method,  now,  did  he  seek  to  gain  his 
end?  Whitman  conceived  that,  his  Evangel  being  unique, 
his  form  also  should  be  unique.  Therefore,  deliberately 
and  of  set  purpose,  he  turned  his  back  on  the  traditional 
forms  of  the  art  of  poetry,  and  threw  his  utterances  into 
a  loose,  irregular,  rhymeless,  and  largely  meter-less  style 
of  dithyrambic  verse,  which  to  one  trained  in  the  conven- 


276  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

tions  of  English  poetry  is  puzzling  and  sometimes  mad 
dening.  He  eschewed  such  time-honored  devices  as 
rhyme  and  definite  meter ;  he  violated  fundamentally  the 
long-accepted  idea  that  poetry  in  depicting  life  should 
select  from  its  raw  material  such  matter  as  is  digestible, 
rejecting  that  which  is  not  suitable  for  the  purposes  of  art. 
Whitman,  contrariwise,  holding  to  the  theory  that  the 
natural  function  of  the  body  and  the  most  material  evi 
dences  of  our  hustling  civilization  are  as  precious  and  as 
significant  as  anything  else,  excluded  nothing  from  his 
poetic  survey ;  and  hence  catalogued  ad  infinitum.  He 
never  realized  that  for  the  purposes  of  art,  the  half  is  more 
than  the  whole.  Hence,  to  some  at  least,  a  large  part  of 
his  work  is  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable,  —  drearily  com 
monplace  and  tedious.  Those  who  accept  this  aspect  of 
his  writing  either  must  take  the  position  that  the  tradi 
tional  theory  of  English  poetry  is  all  wrong ;  or  else  claim 
that  Whitman  is  a  great  thinker  and  reformer  rather  than 
a  poet  in  the  sense  that  word  is  generally  used. 

As  a  brief  example,  out  of  hundreds,  of  the  way  in 
which  this  man  violates  the  poetic  principles,  take  this, 
chosen  almost  at  random  from  "  Drum  Taps  " :  — 

I  dress  the  perforated  shoulder,  the  foot  with  the  bullet  wound, 
Cleanse  the  one  with  a  gnawing  and  putrid  gangrene,  so  sicken 
ing,  so  offensive, 

While  the  attendant  stands  behind  aside  me,  holding  the  tray  and 
pail. 

I  submit  that  this  is  not  the  language  of  poetry  nor  is  it 
the  suitable  treatment  of  a  subject  which  in  itself  might 
be  capable  of  poetic  handling.  There  is  a  failure  here 
both  in  method  and  in  tools.  If  the  whole  poem  from 


Whitman  277 

which  it  is  taken,  "  The  Wound  Dresser,"  shall  be  read, 
the  point  will  be  still  plainer.  Passages  like  this  have  lost 
Whitman  thousands  of  good,  honest  readers  who  are  not 
aware  that  embedded  in  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  there  is  much 
truly  great  poetry.  Repelled  and  disgusted  by  such  an 
extract,  they  look  no  farther. 

Connected  with  this  idea  of  Whitman's  failure  properly 
to  exercise  the  selective  instinct  of  art,  is  to  many  an 
offense  not  only  against  esthetics,  but  against  morals. 
\Vhitman  violates  taste,  but,  it  is  added,  he  also  hymns 
animality.  It  has  been  wittily  said  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass  " 
that  it  contains  every  kind  of  leaf  except  the  fig  leaf.  For 
myself,  the  sin  is  one  of  esthetics,  not  a  spiritual  mis 
doing  ;  for  nobody  can  read  Walt  Whitman  in  his  whole 
range  without  feeling  that  his  purpose  is  high ;  it  is  his 
intention  to  laud  the  body  because  it  is  glorious,  and  con 
versely  to  attack  the  medieval  notion  that  the  body  is 
vile.  Still,  he  is  wrong,  in  a  way,  it  seems  to  me.  The 
body  is  wonderful  to  the  physiologist,  to  the  sculptor,  and 
to  the  thinker  who  regards  it  as  the  vessel  which  houses 
the  spirit.  But  neither  Whitman  nor  another  will  ever 
convince  sane  humanity  that  an  animal  function  in  itself 
is  on  the  same  plane  for  the  purposes  of  creative  and 
imaginative  representation  as  those  higher  functions 
which  belong  to  the  mental  and  moral  natures.  Rela 
tive  to  the  higher,  the  manifestations  of  the  flesh  are 
precious ;  but  after  all,  they  do  link  us  with  the  lower 
orders,  with  the  beast  side  of  life.  Whitman  was  so  des 
perately  anxious  to  do  justice  to  the  body  and  to  depict 
everything,  that  he  lost  his  sense  of  proportion.  The 
body  is  good,  yes ;  but  he  is  mistaken  in  calling  "  the 
scent  of  the  armpits'  aroma  diviner  than  prayer."  This 


278  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

criticism  is  simply  common  sense.  Immoral,  in  the  true 
sense,  Whitman  is  not.  And  often,  I  hasten  to  add,  he  is 
superb  in  his  Homeric  exaltation  of  the  flesh ;  listen  to 
the  following  as  an  example  of  the  better  side  of  such 
treatment :  — 

If  anything  is  sacred  the  human  body  is  sacred,  and  the  glory 
and  sweet  of  a  man  is  the  token  of  manhood  untainted, 

And  in  man  or  woman  a  clean,  strong,  firm-nbered  body  is  more 
beautiful  than  the  most  beautiful  face. 

Have  you  seen  the  fool  that  corrupted  his  own  live  body  ?  or 
the  fool  that  corrupted  her  own  live  body? 

For  they  do  not  conceal  themselves,  and  cannot  conceal  them 
selves. 

Whitman  has  still  other  very  grave  faults  of  style.  With 
an  extraordinary  power  for  imaginative  expression,  his 
language  is  often  grotesque,  disjointed,  and  vulgar.  He 
has  a  curious  way  of  interlining  his  diction  with  foreign 
coinages  —  French,  Spanish,  or  whatever  —  such  as  "cele- 
bres,"  "melange,"  "Americanos,"  "camerades,"  "ma 
femme,"  "presidentiads";  and  of  using  words  borrowed 
from  the  sciences  or  philosophies,  like  "eidolons,"  "philo- 
sophs,"  and  many  more.  At  times  his  rhetoric  is  a  wild 
farrago  of  dissimilar  elements  —  more's  the  pity,  when  he 
was  capable  of  such  really  simple,  fit,  noble  creative 
speech.  Rarely  did  his  diction  have  that  organic  har 
mony  which  is  one  of  the  final  tests  of  style,  of  the 
"grand  manner"  of  Matthew  Arnold. 

Yet,  Whitman  is  a  great  poet  —  in  spite  of  a  wrong 
theory  of  technique,  of  an  uncertain  style  and  of  many 
sins  against  taste  and  art.  He  has  both  vision  and  voice  ; 
poetic  conceptions  that  are  grand  and  high  and  a  master- 


Whitman  279 

ful  gift  of  imaginative  utterance.  He  is  a  great  poet  in 
spite  of  his  lack  of  art,  not  because  of  it.  Sidney  Lanier, 
an  artist  to  his  finger-tips,  declared  that  Whitman  was 
"  Poetry's  butcher.  Huge  raw  collops  slashed  from  the 
rump  of  poetry  and  never  mind  gristle,  is  what  Whitman 
feeds  our  souls  with."  This  is  hardly  putting  it  too 
strong.  No  man  perhaps  in  the  poetic  history  of  the 
race  needs  editing  to  be  appreciated  so  much  as  Walt 
Whitman. 

He  is  a  poet  of  epithets,  phrases,  and  lines ;  of  places 
and  passages,  of  brief  inspirations.  Very  rarely  was  his 
flight  steady ;  in  the  midst  of  a  prosaic  list  of  items  a 
sudden  figure  or  phrase  may  lift  the  reader  to  the  very 
heights  —  or,  carried  on  eagles'  wings,  you  may  as  sud 
denly  be  dumped  on  a  dung  heap.  It  is  in  short  pieces 
that  he  may  best  be  approached  by  those  seeking  his 
acquaintance.  We  may  illustrate ;  here  is  a  glimpsed  war- 
picture.  (All  quotations  are  referred  to  the  Small,  May- 
nard  edition  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  complete  in  one  volume. 
The  prose  selection  is  from  the  prose  volume  in  the  same 
edition.) 

BY  THE  BIVOUAC'S  FITFUL  FLAME 

By  the  bivouac's  fitful  flame, 

A  procession  winding  around  me,  solemn  and  sweet  and  slow  — 
but  first  I  note, 

The  tents  of  the  sleeping  army,  the  fields'  and  woods'  dim  out 
line, 

The  darkness  lit  by  spots  of  kindled  fire,  the  silence, 

Like  a  phantom  far  or  near  an  occasional  figure  moving, 

The  shrubs  and  trees,  (as  I  lift  my  eyes  they  seem  to  be 
stealthily  watching  me,) 

While  wind  in  procession  thoughts,  0  tender  and  wondrous 
thoughts, 


280  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Of  life  and  death,  of  home  and  the  past  and  loved,  and  of  those 

that  are  far  away ; 

A  solemn  and  slow  procession  there  as  I  sit  on  the  ground, 
By  the  bivouac's  fitful  flame. 

Take  this  bit,  which  expresses,  despite  the  somewhat 
prosy  manner  of  it,  his  deep  love  for  Nature  here  set  in 
contrast  with  the  f ussiness  of  lecture-room  science  :  — 


WHEN   I   HEARD  THE  LEARN'D  ASTRONOMER 

When  I  heard  the  learn'd  astronomer, 

When  the  proofs,  the  figures,  were  ranged  in  columns  before  me, 

When  I  was  shown  the  charts  and  diagrams,  to  add,  divide,  and 

measure  them, 
When  I  sitting  heard  the  astronomer  where  he  lectured  with  much 

applause  in  the  lecture  room, 
How  soon  unaccountable  I  became  tired  and  sick, 
Till  rising  and  gliding  out  I  wander'd  off  by  myself, 
In  the  mystical  moist  night  air,  and  from  time  to  time, 
Look'd  up  in  perfect  silence  at  the  stars. 

At  least  one  example  must  be  given  of  his  sense  of 
primitive  man  in  America, — the  fine  though  unequal  poem 
on  the  Pioneers. 

PIONEERS!  O   PIONEERS! 

Come,  my  tan-faced  children, 
Follow  well  in  order,  get  your  weapons  ready, 
Have  you  your  pistols?  have  you  your  sharp-edged  axes? 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

For  we  cannot  tarry  here, 

We  must  march,  my  darlings,  we  must  bear  the  brunt  of  danger, 
We  the  youthful  sinewy  races,  all  the  rest  on  us  depend, 

Pioneers!  O  pioneers! 


Whitman  281 

O  you  youths,  Western  youths, 

So  impatient,  full  of  action,  full  of  manly  pride  and  friendship, 
Plain  I  see  you,  Western  youths,  see  you  tramping  with  the  fore 
most, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

Have  the  elder  races  halted  ? 
Do  they  droop  and  end  their  lesson,  wearied  over  there  beyond 

the  seas? 
We  take  up  the  task  eternal,  and  the  burden  and  the  lesson, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

All  the  past  we  leave  behind, 

We  debouch  upon  a  newer  mightier  world,  varied  world, 
Fresh  and  strong  the  world  we  seize,  world  of  labor  and  the  march, 

Pioneers!  O  pioneers! 

We  detachments  steady  throwing 

Down  the  edges,  through  the  passes,  up  the  mountains  steep, 
Conquering,  holding,  daring,  venturing  as  we  go  the  unknown 
ways, 

Pioneers!  O  pioneers! 

We  primeval  forests  felling, 
We  the  rivers  stemming,  vexing  we  and  piercing  deep  the  mines 

within, 
We  the  surface  broad  surveying,  we  the  virgin  soil  upheaving, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

Colorado  men  are  we, 
From  the  peaks  gigantic,  from  the  great  sierras  and  the  high 

plateaus, 
From  the  mine  and  from  the  gully,  from  the  hunting  trail  we  come, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

From  Nebraska,  from  Arkansas, 
Central  inland  race  are  we,  from  Missouri,  with  the  continental 

blood  intervein'd, 
All  the  hands  of  comrades  clasping,  all  the   Southern,  all  the 

Northern, 
Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 


282  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

O  resistless  restless  race ! 
O  beloved  race  in  all !    O  my  breast  aches  with  tender  love  for 

all! 
O  I  mourn  and  yet  exult,  I  am  rapt  with  love  for  all, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

Raise  the  mighty  mother  mistress, 
Waving  high  the  delicate  mistress,  over  all  the  starry  mistress, 

(bend  your  heads  all,) 
Raise  the  fang'd  and  warlike  mistress,   stern,   impassive, 

weapon'd  mistress, 
Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

See  my  children,  resolute  children, 

By  those  swarms  upon  our  rear  we  must  never  yield  or  falter, 
Ages  back  in  ghostly  millions  frowning  there  behind  us  urging, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

On  and  on  the  compact  ranks, 
With  accessions  ever  waiting,  with  the  places  of  the  dead 

quickly  fill'd, 
Through  the  battle,  through  defeat,  moving  yet  and  never 

stopping, 
Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

O  to  die  advancing  on ! 

Are  there  some  of  us  to  droop  and  die?  has  the  hour  come? 
Then  upon  the  march  we  fittest  die,  soon  and  sure  the  gap  is  fill'd, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

All  the  pulses  of  the  world, 

Falling  in  they  beat  for  us,  with  the  Western  movement  beat, 
Holding  single  or  together,  steady  moving  to  the  front,  all  for  us, 

Pioneers !  0  pioneers ! 

Life's  involv'd  and  varied  pageants, 
All  the  forms  and  shows,  all  the  workmen  at  their  work, 
All  the  seamen  and  the  landsmen,  all  the  masters  with  their 
slaves, 

Pioneers !  0  pioneers ! 

All  the  hapless  silent  lovers, 

All  the  prisoners  in  the  prisons,  all  the  righteous  and  the  wicked, 
All  the  joyous,  all  the  sorrowing,  all  the  living,  all  the  dying, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 


Whitman  283 

I  too  with  my  soul  and  body, 

We,  a  curious  trio,  picking,  wandering  on  our  way, 
Through  these  shores  amid  the  shadows,  with  the  apparitions 
pressing, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

Lo,  the  darting  bowling  orb ! 
Lo,  the  brother  orbs  around,  all  the  clustering  suns  and 

planets, 
All  the  dazzling  days,  all  the  mystic  nights  with  dreams, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

These  are  of  us,  they  are  with  us, 
All  for  primal  needed  work,  while  the  followers  there  in 

embryo  wait  behind, 
We  to-day's  procession  heading,  we  the  route  for  travel 

clearing, 
Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

0  you  daughters  of  the  West ! 
0  you  young  and  elder  daughters !   O  you  mothers  and  you 

wives ! 
Never  must  you  be  divided,  in  our  ranks  you  move  united, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

Minstrels  latent  on  the  prairies ! 
(Shrouded  bards  of  other  lands,  you  may  rest,  you  have  done 

your  work,) 
Soon  I  hear  you  coming  warbling,  soon  you  rise  and  tramp 

amid  us, 
Pioneers !  0  pioneers ! 

Not  for  delectations  sweet, 
Not  the  cushion  and  the  slipper,  not  the  peaceful  and  the 

studious, 
Not  the  riches  safe  and  palling,  not  for  us  the  tame  enjoyment, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 

Do  the  f casters  gluttonous  feast? 
Do  the  corpulent  sleepers  sleep  ?    have  they  lock'd  and  bolted 

doors  ? 
Still  be  ours  the  diet  hard,  and  the  blanket  on  the  ground, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers ! 


284  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Has  the  night  descended? 

Was  the  road  of  late  so  toilsome?  did  we  stop  discouraged  nod 
ding  on  our  way  ? 
Yet  a  passing  hour  I  yield  you  in  your  tracks  to  pause  oblivious, 

Pioneers!  O  pioneers! 

Till  with  sound  of  trumpet, 
Far,  far  off  the  daybreak  call  —  hark !  how  loud  and  clear  I  hear 

it  wind, 
Swift !  to  the  head  of  the  army !  —  swift !  spring  to  your  places, 

Pioneers !  O  pioneers  I 

How  pathetic  and  impressive  is  this  old-age  defiance, 
which  he  flung  out  when  the  ship  of  life  was  already  strain 
ing  at  her  anchor : — 

OLD  AGE'S  SHIP  &  CRAFTY  DEATH'S 

From  east  and  west  across  the  horizon's  edge, 

Two  mighty  masterful  vessels  sailers  steal  upon  us : 

But  we'll  make  race  a-time  upon  the  seas  —  a  battle-contest  yet 

bear  lively  there! 

(Our  joys  of  strife  and  derring-do  to  the  last !) 
Put  on  the  old  ship  all  her  power  to-day! 
Crowd  topsail,  topgallant  and  royal  studding-sails, 
Out  challenge  and  defiance  —  flags  and  flaunting  pennants  added, 
As  we  take  to  the  open  —  take  to  the  deepest,  freest  waters. 

In  two  of  his  long  poems  before  all  others  is  Whitman, 
in  my  opinion,  steadily  a  great  poet ;  having  an  adequate 
subject,  and  using  it  to  the  noblest  results  of  song.  One 
is  the  Thrush  Chant,  "Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly 
Rocking,"  in  which  his  power  in  nature  description  along 
with  his  strong,  deep  love,  which  includes  all  lesser  living 
things  like  birds,  is  sweepingly  and  piercingly  conveyed ; 
the  other,  the  great  patriotic  chant  on  Lincoln,  his  idol 


Whitman  285 

among  men  (the  hero  of  "  Captain,  O  My  Captain "), 
which  must  take  its  place  as  a  threnody  in  American 
poetry  along  with  Lowell's  "  Commemoration  Ode." 


MEMORIES  OF  PRESIDENT,  LINCOLN 

WHEN   LILACS  LAST   IN  THE   DOORYARD  BLOOM'D 


When  lilacs  last  in  the  dooryard  bloom'd, 

And  the  great  star  early  drooped  in  the  western  sky  in  the  night, 

I  mourn'd,  and  yet  shall  mourn  with  ever  returning  spring. 

Ever  returning  spring,  trinity  sure  to  me  you  bring, 
Lilac  blooming  perennial  and  drooping  star  in  the  west, 
And  thought  of  him  I  love. 


O  powerful  western  fallen  star! 

O  shades  of  night  —  O  moody,  tearful  night ! 

O  great  star  disappeared  —  O  the  black  murk  that  hides  the  star! 

O  cruel  hands  that  hold  me  powerless  —  O  helpless  soul  of  me! 

O  harsh  surrounding  cloud  that  will  not  free  my  soul. 

3 

In  the  dooryard  fronting  an  old  farmhouse  near  the  whitewashed 

palings, 
Stands  the  lilac  bush  tall-growing  with  heart-shaped  leaves  of 

rich  green, 
With  many  a  pointed  blossom  rising  delicate,  with  the  perfume 

strong  I  love, 

With  every  leaf  a  miracle  —  and  from  this  bush  in  the  dooryard^ 
With  delicate-color'd  blossoms  and  heart-shaped  leaves  of  rich 

green, 
A  sprig  with  its  flower  I  break. 


286  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

4 

In  the  swamp  in  secluded  recesses, 
A  shy  and  hidden  bird  is  warbling  a  song. 

Solitary  the  thrush, 

The  hermit  withdrawn  to  himself,  avoiding  the  settlements, 

Sings  by  himself  a  song. 

Song  of  the  bleeding  throat, 

Death's  outlet  song  of  life,  (for  well  dear  brother  I  know, 

If  thou  wast  not  granted  to  sing  thou  would'st  surely  die.) 

5 

Over  the  breast  of  the  spring,  the  land,  amid  cities, 
Amid  lanes  and  through  old  woods,  where  lately  the  violets 

peep'd  from  the  ground,  spotting  the  gray  debris, 
Amid  the  grass  in  the  fields  each  side  of  the  lanes,  passing  the 

endless  grass, 
Passing  the  yellow-spear'd  wheat,  every  grain  from  its  shroud 

in  the  dark-brown  fields  uprisen, 

Passing  the  apple  tree  blows  of  white  and  pink  in  the  orchards, 
Carrying  a  corpse  to  where  it  shall  rest  in  the  grave, 
Night  and  day  journey's  a  coffin. 

6 

Coffin  that  passes  through  lanes  and  streets, 

Through  day  and  night  with  the  great  cloud  darkening  the 

land, 
With  the  pomp  of  the  inloop'd  flags  with  the  cities  draped  in 

black, 
With  the  show  of  the  States  themselves  as  of  crape-veil'd 

women  standing, 
With  processions  long  and  winding  and  the  flambeaus  of  the 

night, 
With  the  countless  torches  lit,  with  the  silent  sea  of  faces  and 

the  unbared  heads, 
With  the  waiting  depot,  the  arriving  coffin,  and  the  somber 

faces, 


Whitman  287 

With  dirges  through  the  night,  with  the  thousand  voices  rising 

strong  and  solemn, 
With  all  the  mournful  voices  of  the  dirges  pour'd  around  the 

coffin, 
The  dim-lit  churches  and  the  shuddering  organs — where  amid 

these  you  journey, 

With  the  tolling  tolling  bells'  perpetual  clang, 
Here,  coffin  that  slowly  passes, 
I  give  you  my  sprig  of  lilac. 


(Nor  for  you,  for  one  alone, 

Blossoms  and  branches  green  to  coffins  all  I  bring, 
For  fresh  as  the  morning,  thus  would  I  chant  a  song  for  you  O 
sane  and  sacred  death. 

All  over  bouquets  of  roses, 

O  death,  I  cover  you  over  with  roses  and  early  lilies, 

But  mostly  and  now  the  lilac  that  blooms  the  first, 

Copious  I  break,  I  break  the  sprigs  from  the  bushes, 

With  loaded  arms  I  come,  pouring  for  you, 

For  you  and  the  coffins  all  of  you  0  death.) 

8 

O  western  orb  sailing  the  heaven, 

Now  I  know  what  you  must  have  meant  as  a  month  since  I 

walk'd, 

As  I  walk'd  in  silence  the  transparent  shadowy  night, 
As  I  saw  you  had  something  to  tell  as  you  bent  to  me  night 

after  night, 
As  you  droop'd  from  the  sky  low  down  as  if  to  my  side,  (while 

the  other  stars  all  look'd  on,) 
As  we  wander'd  together  the  solemn  night,  (for  something  I 

know  not  what  kept  me  from  sleep,) 
As  the  night  advanced,  and  I  saw  on  the  rim  of  the  west  how 

full  you  were  of  woe, 


288  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

As  I  stood  on  the  rising  ground  in  the  breeze  in  the  cool  trans 
parent  night, 

As  I  watch'd  where  you  passed  and  was  lost  in  the  netherward 
black  of  the  night, 

As  my  soul  in  its  trouble  dissatisfied  sank,  as  where  you  sad  orb, 

Concluded,  dropt  in  the  night,  and  was  gone. 

9 

Sing  on  there  in  the  swamp, 

0  singer  bashful  and  tender,  I  hear  your  notes,  I  hear  your  call, 

1  hear,  I  come  presently,  I  understand  you, 

But  a  moment  I  linger,  for  the  lustrous  star  has  detained  me, 
The  star  my  departing  comrade  holds  and  detains  me. 

10 

O  how  shall  I  warble  myself  for  the  dead  one  there  I  loved? 
And  how  shall  I  deck  my  song  for  the  large  sweet  soul  that  has 

gone? 
And  what  shall  my  perfume  be  for  the  grave  of  him  I  love? 

Sea  winds  blown  from  east  and  west, 

Blown  from  the  Eastern  sea  and  blown  from  the  Western  sea,  till 

there  on  the  prairies  meeting, 
These  and  with  these  and  the  breath  of  my  chant, 
I'll  perfume  the  grave  of  him  I  love. 

ii 

O  what  shall  I  hang  on  the  chamber  walls? 

And  what  shall  the  pictures  be  that  I  hang  on  the  walls, 

To  adorn  the  burial  house  of  him  I  love? 

Pictures  of  growing  spring  and  farms  and  homes, 

With  the  Fourth-month  eve  at  sundown,  and  the  gray  smoke 

lucid  and  bright, 
With  floods  of  the  yellow  gold  of  the  gorgeous,  indolent,  sinking 

sun,  burning,  expanding  the  air, 


Whitman  289 

With  the  fresh  sweet  herbage  under  foot,  and  the  pale  green 

leaves  of  the  trees  prolific, 
In  the  distance  the  flowing  glaze,  the  breast  of  the  river,  with  a 

wind-dapple  here  and  there, 
With  ranging  hills  on  the  banks,  with  many  a  line  against  the 

sky,  and  shadows, 
And  the  city  at  hand  with  dwellings  so  dense,  and  stacks  of 

chimneys, 
And  all  the  scenes  of  life  and  the  workshops,  and  the  workmen 

homeward  returning. 

12 

Lo,  body  and  soul  —  this  land, 

My  own  Manhattan  with  spires,  and  the  sparkling  and  hurrying 

tides,  and  the  ships, 
The  varied  and  ample  land,  the  South  and  the  North  in  the 

light,  Ohio's  shores  and  flashing  Missouri, 
And  ever  the  far-spreading  prairies  covered  with  grass  and  corn. 

Lo,  the  most  excellent  sun  so  calm  and  haughty, 

The  violet  and  purple  morn  with  just-felt  breezes, 

The  gentle  soft-born  measureless  light, 

The  miracle  spreading  bathing  all,  the  fulfilTd  noon, 

The  coming  eve  delicious,  the  welcome  night  and  the  stars, 

Over  my  cities  shining  all,  enveloping  man  and  land. 

13 

Sing  on,  sing  on  you  gray-brown  bird, 

Sing  from  the  swamps,  the  recesses,  pour  your  chant  from  the 

bushes, 
Limitless  out  of  the  dusk,  out  of  the  cedars  and  pines. 

Sing  on  dearest  brother,  warble  your  reedy  song, 
Loud  human  song,  with  voice  of  uttermost  woe. 

O  liquid  and  free  and  tender  ! 

O  wild  and  loose  to  my  soul  —  O  wondrous  singer  ! 
You  only  I  hear  —  yet  the  star  holds  me,  (but  will  soon  depart,) 
Yet  the  lilac  with  mastering  odor  holds  me. 
u 


290  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

14 

Now  while  I  sat  in  the  day  and  look'd  forth, 

In  the  close  of  the  day  with  its  light  and  the  fields  of  spring,  and 

the  farmers  preparing  their  crops, 
In  the  large  unconscious  scenery  of  my  land  with  its  lakes  and 

forests, 
In  the  heavenly  aerial  beauty,  (after  the  perturbed  winds  and  the 

storms,) 
Under  the  arching  heavens  of  the  afternoon  swift  passing,  and 

the  voices  of  children  and  women, 

The  many-moving  sea  tides,  and  I  saw  the  ships  how  they  saiPd, 
And  the  summer  approaching  with  richness,  and  the  fields  all 

busy  with  labor, 
And  the  infinite  separate  houses,  how  they  all  went  on,  each  with 

its  meals  and  minutia  of  daily  usages, 
And  the  streets  how  their  throbbings  throbb'd,  and  the  cities  pent 

—  lo,  then  and  there, 
Falling  upon  them  all  and  among  them  all,  enveloping  me  with 

the  rest, 

Appear'd  the  cloud,  appear'd  the  long  black  trail, 
And   I  knew  death,  its  thought,  and  the  sacred  knowledge  of 

death. 

Then  with  the  knowledge  of  death  as  walking  one  side  of  me, 
And  the  thought  of  death  close-walking  the  other  side  of  me, 
And  I  in  the  middle  as  with  companions,  and  as  holding  the 

hands  of  companions, 

I  fled  forth  to  the  hiding  receiving  night  that  talks  not, 
Down  to  the  shores  of  the  water,  the  path  by  the  swamp  in  the 

dimness, 
To  the  solemn  shadowy  cedars  and  ghostly  pines  so  still. 

And  the  singer  so  shy  to  the  rest  received  me, 

The  gray-brown  bird  I  know  receiv'd  us  comrades  three, 

And  he  sang  the  carol  of  death,  and  a  verse  for  him  I  love. 

From  deep  secluded  recesses, 

From  the  fragrant  cedars  and  the  ghostly  pines  so  still, 

Came  the  carol  of  the  bird. 


Whitman  291 

And  the  charm  of  the  carol  rapt  me, 

As  I  held  as  if  by  their  hands  my  comrades  in  the  night, 

And  the  voice  of  my  spirit  tallied  the  song  of  the  bird. 

Come  lovely  and  soothing  death, 

Undulate  round  the  world,  serenely  arriving,  arriving, 

In  the  day,  in  the  night,  to  all,  to  each. 

Sooner  or  later  delicate  death. 

Praised  be  the  fathomless  universe, 
For  life  and  joy,  and  for  objects  and  knowledge  curious, 
And  for  love,  sweet  love  —  but  praise1,  praise!  praise ! 
For  the  sure-enwinding  arms  of  cool-enfolding  death. 

Dark  mother  always  gliding  near  with  soft  feet, 
Have  none  chanted  for  thee  a  chant  of  fullest  welcome  f 
Then  I  chant  it  for  thee,  I  glorify  thee  above  all, 
I  bring  thee  a  song  that  when  thou  must  indeed  come,  come  unfal 
teringly. 

Approach  strong  deliver  ess, 

When  it  is  so,  when  thou  hast  taken  them  I  joyously  sing  the 

dead, 

Lost  in  the  loving  floating  ocean  of  thee, 
Laved  in  the  flood  of  thy  bliss  O  death. 

From  me  to  thee  glad  serenades, 

Dances  for  thee  I  propose  saluting  thee,  adornments  and  feast- 
ings  for  thee, 

And  the  sights  of  the  open  landscape  and  the  high-spread  sky  are 
fitting, 

And  life  and  the  fields,  and  the  huge  and  thmtghtful  night. 

The  night  in  silence  under  many  a  star, 

The  ocean  shore  and  the  husky  whispering  wave  whose  voice  / 

ktww, 

And  the  soul  turning  to  thee  O  vast  and  well-veiled  death, 
And  the  body  gratefully  nestling  close  to  thee. 


292  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Over  the  tree  tops  I  float  thee  a  song, 

Over  the  rising  and  sinking  waves,  over  the  myriad  fields  and  the 

prairies  wide, 
Over  the  dense-packed  cities  all  and  the  teeming  wharves  and 

ways, 
I  float  this  carol  with  joy,  with  joy  to  thee  O  death. 

'5 

To  the  tally  of  my  soul, 

Loud  and  strong  kept  up  the  gray-brown  bird, 

With  pure  deliberate  notes  spreading  filling  the  night. 

Loud  in  the  pines  and  cedars  dim, 

Clear  in  the  freshness  moist  and  the  swamp-perfume, 

And  I  with  my  comrades  there  in  the  night. 

While  my  sight  that  was  bound  in  my  eyes  unclosed, 
As  to  long  panoramas  of  visions. 

And  I  saw  askant  the  armies, 

I  saw  as  in  noiseless  dreams  hundreds  of  battle-flags, 

Borne  through  the  smoke  of  the  battles  and  pierc'd  with  missiles 

I  saw  them, 
And  carried  hither  and  yon  through  the  smoke,  and  torn  and 

bloody, 

And  at  last  but  a  few  shreds  left  on  the  staffs,  (and  all  in  silence,) 
And  the  staffs  all  splinter'd  and  broken. 

I  saw  battle-corpses,  myriads  of  them, 

And  the  white  skeletons  of  young  men,  I  saw  them, 

I  saw  the  debris  and  debris  of  all  the  slain  soldiers  of  the  war, 

But  I  saw  they  were  not  as  was  thought, 

They  themselves  were  fully  at  rest,  they  suffer'd  not, 

The  living  remain'd  and  suffer'd,  the  mother  suffer'd, 

And  the  wife  and  the  child  and  the  musing  comrade  suffered, 

And  the  armies  that  remain'd  suffer'd. 

16 

Passing  the  visions,  passing  the  night, 

Passing,  unloosing  the  hold  of  my  comrades'  hands, 


Whitman  293 

Passing  the  song  of  the  hermit  bird  and  the  tallying  song  of  my 

soul, 
Victorious  song,  death's  outlet  song,  yet  varying  ever  altering 

song, 

As  low  and  wailing  yet  clear  the  notes,  rising  and  falling,  flood 
ing  the  night, 
Sadly  sinking  and   fainting,  as  warning  and  warning,  and  yet 

again  bursting  with  joy, 

Covering  the  earth  and  filling  the  spread  of  the  heaven, 
As  that  powerful  psalm  in  the  night  I  heard  from  recesses, 
Passing,  I  leave  thee  lilac  with  heart-shaped  leaves, 
I   leave  thee  there    in  the  dooryard,  blooming,  returning  with 
spring. 

I  cease  from  my  song  for  thee, 

From  my  gaze  on  thee  in  the  west,  fronting  the  west,  communing 

with  thee, 
O  comrade  lustrous  with  silver  face  in  the  night. 

Yet  each  to  keep  and  all,  retrievements  out  of  the  night, 

The  song,  the  wondrous  chant  of  the  gray-brown  bird, 

And  the  tallying  chant,  the  echo  arous'd  in  my  soul, 

With  the  lustrous  and  drooping  star  with  the  countenance  full  of 

woe, 

With  the  holders  holding  my  hand  nearing  the  call  of  the  bird, 
Comrades  mine  and  I  in  the  midst,  and  their  memory  ever  to 

keep,  for  the  dead  I  loved  so  well, 
For  the  sweetest,  wisest  soul  of  all  my  days  and  lands  —  and  this 

for  his  dear  sake, 

Lilac  and  star  and  bird  twined  with  the  chant  of  my  soul, 
There  in  the  fragrant  pines  and  the  cedars  dusk  and  dim. 

It  is  worth  noting,  as  one  reads  these  greater  poems, 
that  it  is  just  when  Whitman  is  at  his  best  that  he  be 
comes  most  definitely  rhythmical,  approaches  nearest  to 
artistic  form,  and  does  not  drop  into  the  prosy  banalities 
which  so  often  injure  his  less  inspired  efforts. 


294  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

The  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  is  to  be  read,  then,  not  because 
it  is  steadily  poetry,  but  because  there  speaks  in  it  a  great 
personality,  with  a  striking  gospel.  The  book,  whatever 
may  be  said  against  it,  is  emphatically  a  book  of  life.  It 
is  the  message  of  a  big,  brave,  puissant  man.  If  I  may 
make  a  suggestion,  a  good  way  to  come  into  sympathetic 
communion  with  Walt  Whitman  is  to  begin  with  a  selected 
edition  of  his  works ;  such  a  one  was  made  by  Arthur 
Stedman  some  years  ago,  and  can  be  commended.  Then, 
the  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  can  be  studied  as  a  whole,  after 
the  reader  is  indoctrinated  with  Whitman  by  these  culled 
poems,  —  and  thus  his  full  meaning  and  significance 
grasped. 

A  final  word  on  Whitman's  prose.  It  lacks  organism, 
balance,  and  breeding.  Most  of  it  has  the  effect  of  the 
disjointed  hurry  of  note-taking,  —  indeed,  it  was  mostly 
thus  written.  There  is  in  it  —  as  in  the  verse — a  fine 
scorn  of  punctuation.  But  Whitman  is  eminently  pic 
turesque  and  suggestive  as  a  maker  of  prose,  and  often 
wonderfully  poetical  or  powerful.  Rugged  as  Carry le,  and 
far  more  formless,  you  yet  feel  that  a  leviathan  is  moving 
through  the  waters  when  he  heaves  in  sight.  As  a  corol 
lary  to  the  poetry,  the  prose  is  also  important.  The  student, 
therefore,  would  make  a  grievous  mistake  if,  for  a  just  ap 
preciation  of  the  man,  his  prose  was  neglected.  The  fol 
lowing  is  a  fair  example  of  the  full-mouthed  swell  of  his 
music  at  times,  with  its  pathetic  under-surge  of  virile 
feeling :  — 

Nor  will  ever  future  American  patriots  and  Unionists,  indiffer 
ently  over  the  whole  land,  or  North  or  South,  find  a  better  moral 
to  tlieir  lesson.  The  final  use  of  the  greatest  men  of  a  Nation  is, 
after  all,  not  with  reference  to  their  deeds  in  themselves,  or  their 


Whitman  295 

direct  bearing  on  their  times  or  lands.  The  final  use  of  a  heroic- 
eminent  life  —  especially  of  a  heroic-eminent  death  —  is  its  indirect 
filtering  into  the  nation  and  the  race,  and  to  give,  often  at  many 
removes,  but  unerringly,  age  after  age,  color  and  fiber  to  the  per- 
sonalism  of  the  youth  and  maturity  of  that  age  and  of  mankind. 
Then  there  is  a  cement  to  the  whole  people,  subtler,  more  under 
lying,  than  anything  in  written  constitutions  or  courts  or  armies  — 
namely,  the  cement  of  a  death  identified  thoroughly  with  that 
people,  as  its  head,  for  its  sake.  Strange  (is  it  not  ?)  that  battles, 
martyrs,  agonies,  blood,  even  assassination,  should  so  condense  — 
perhaps  only  really,  lastingly  condense  —  a  Nationality. 

I  repeat  it,  —  the  grand  deaths  of  the  race,  the  dramatic  deaths 
of  every  nationality,  are  its  most  important  inheritance-values,  in 
some  respects  beyond  its  literature  and  art  (as  the  hero  is  beyond 
his  finest  portrait,  and  the  battle  itself  beyond  its  choicest  song 
or  epic).  Is  not  here  indeed  the  point  underlying  all  tragedy? 
the  famous  pieces  of  the  Greek  masters  —  and  all  masters  ?  Why, 
if  the  old  Greeks  had  had  this  man  what  trilogies  of  plays  —  what 
epics  —  would  have  been  made  out  of  him !  How  the  rhapsodes 
would  have  recited  him!  How  quickly  the  quaint,  tall  form 
would  have  entered  into  the  region  where  men  vitalize  gods  and 
gods  divinify  men  1  But  Lincoln,  his  times,  his  death  —  great  as 
any,  any  age  —  belong  altogether  to  our  own,  and  our  autochthonic ! 
(Sometimes,  indeed,  I  think  our  American  days,  our  own  stage  — 
the  actors  we  know  and  have  shaken  hands  or  talk'd  with,  more 
fateful  than  anything  in  Eschylus,  more  heroic  than  the  fighters 
around  Troy  —  afford  kings  of  men  for  our  democracy  prouder 
than  Agamemnon,  models  of  character  cute  and  hardy  as  Ulysses, 
deaths  more  pitiful  than  Priam's.) 


CHAPTER   XIII 

LANIER 

FOR  half  a  century  Poe  has  been  regarded  as  the  one 
great  poet  of  the  American  South.  When  Sidney  Lanier, 
the  Georgian  singer,  died  something  over  twenty  years 
ago,  he  was  looked  upon  by  a  few  critics  as  a  graceful 
poet  of  pure  strain,  and  a  man  of  more  promise  than 
performance,  —  since  he  was  so  untimely  taken  away. 
He  died  before  he  was  forty  years  of  age.  But  as  time 
has  elapsed,  a  remarkable  change  has  taken  place  in 
the  estimate  of  this  bard.  Gradually  he  has  come  into 
prominence,  his  true  significance  has  been  realized,  and 
at  last  he  has  come  to  be  reckoned,  in  the  language  of 
Dr.  Ward,  which  when  written  was  a  prophecy,  "  among 
the  princes  of  American  songs."  The  reader  who  opens 
Stedman's  authoritative  "  American  Anthology"  will  find  a 
frontispiece  portrait  group  of  eight  leaders  of  American 
song;  and  one  of  them  is  Lanier.  To  those  who  felt 
many  years  ago  that  Lanier  belonged  to  such  company, 
this  recognition  is  a  matter  of  peculiar  pleasure. 

This  widening  of  the  reputation  of  Sidney  Lanier  since 
his  death  is  no  doubt  due  in  a  measure  to  the  fact  that 
a  number  of  prose  works  of  his  of  value  have  been  brought 
out  from  time  to  time,  with  the  result  of  giving  a  truer 
sense  of  the  variety  and  extent  of  his  literary  accomplish 
ments.  But  the  main  reason  lies  in  the  other  fact,  that 

%  296 


Lanier  297 

Lanier  both  in  prose  and  verse  was  so  original,  so  much 
the  innovator  and  independent,  that  he  inevitably  won  his 
way  more  slowly  to  sure  approval.  It  is  the  history  of 
literature  that  facile  adaptation  to  traditional  ways  and 
models  means  a  quick  reward  ;  while  new  literary  forces  at 
first  get  no  hearing,  or  at  the  best  a  small  and  grudging 
one.  It  was  so  with  this  gifted  and  high-souled  Southerner 
whose  life,  in  rare  and  beautiful  harmony  with  his  song, 
makes  as  moving  a  story  as  literary  biography  can  tell. 

Sidney  Lanier  was  born  in  February,  1842,  in  Macon, 
Georgia,  where  his  father  was  a  much-respected  lawyer. 
The  family,  as  the  name  implies,  was  on  the  paternal  side 
of  French  descent  and  Huguenot  in  its  religious  predilec 
tions.  From  the  maternal  branch  Scotch  blood  mingled 
with  French,  so  that  the  Celtic  strain,  which  in  men  of  the 
English-speaking  race  has  so  often  been  of  avail  for  im 
aginative  creation,  was  doubly  Lanier's  dower.  He  thus 
had  the  advantage  of  a  cultured  home,  and  received  a 
fair  education  at  Oglethorpe  College  in  his  native  state  — 
though  one  not  to  his  own  satisfaction.  But  on  the  break 
ing  out  of  the  Civil  War  Lanier,  still  a  very  young  man, 
like  many  another  high-spirited  Southern  youth  enlisted 
naturally  enough  on  the  Confederate  side.  He  was  made 
a  prisoner  of  war,  and  under  such  untoward  circumstances 
the  twin  passions  of  his  life  —  music  and  literature  —  com 
forted  him ;  for  while  thus  immured  he  played  his  flute 
behind  prison  bars  and  wrote  fugitive  verses,  transla 
tions  and  original. 

Father  Tabb,  the  Maryland  poet-priest,  was  a  fellow 
with  him  in  this  harsh  experience,  and  the  two  began  a 
friendship  which  the  latter  has  celebrated  in  more  than 
one  tender  lyric. 


298  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Lanier's  constitution  was  always  delicate,  and  the  ex 
posures  and  hardships  of  war  developed  the  seeds  of  con 
sumption,  which  he  fought  in  hero  fashion  through  young 
and  middle  manhood,  to  be  finally  conquered  before  he 
had  done  half  the  work  that  was  in  him  to  do.  The  war 
over,  experiments  at  this  and  that  occupation  followed. 
His  father  wished  him  to  follow  the  law  in  his  footsteps  ; 
it  may  be  remarked  parenthetically  that  the  literary  leaders 
grouped  in  this  volume  with  few  exceptions  tried  the  legal 
profession,  only  to  find  the  centripetal  pull  of  literature 
too  strong  for  them.  Sidney  wrote  to  his  father  that  he 
felt  imperatively  called  away  from  any  work  save  that  of 
letters. 

"  How  can  I,"  he  cries,  pathetically  enough,  "  settle 
down  to  be  a  third-rate  lawyer  for  the  balance  of  my  little 
life  as  long  as  there  is  a  certainty  almost  absolute  that  I 
can  do  some  other  things  so  much  better?  My  dear 
father,  think  how  for  twenty  years,  through  poverty, 
through  pain,  through  weariness,  through  the  uncongenial 
atmosphere  of  a  farcical  college  and  a  bare  army,  and 
then  of  an  exacting  business  life  —  through  all  of  the  dis 
couragement  of  being  wholly  unacquainted  with  literary 
people  and  literary  ways,  ...  in  spite  of  all  these  depress 
ing  circumstances,  .  .  .  these  two  figures  of  music  and  of 
poetry  have  kept  in  my  heart  so  that  I  could  not  banish 
them.  Does  it  not  seem  to  you,  as  to  me,  that  I  have  the 
right  to  enroll  myself  among  the  devotees  of  these  two 
sublime  arts,  after  having  followed  them  so  long  and  so 
humbly,  and  through  so  much  bitterness  ? " 

The  parent  wisely  yielded,  and  behold  the  young  man 
dedicated  to  the  struggle  —  and  a  struggle  indeed  it  was 
in  his  case.  I  say  dedicated,  for  to  a  man  like  Lanier  the 


Lanier  299 

choice  had  in  it  all  the  solemnity  of  a  consecration.  His 
ideal  of  art  was  so  lofty  that  its  service  became  the  most 
serious  thing  to  him  in  the  world.  Nor,  through  whatever 
of  setback,  stress,  and  misery,  did  he  for  a  moment  lower 
his  standard  or  swerve  from  a  devotion  which  was  little 
less  than  knightly.  To  the  last  he  was  a  priest  of  that 
highest  beauty  which  is  the  beauty  spiritual. 

He  began  by  publishing  a  novel  founded  on  his  war 
experiences  and  full  of  a  luxuriant  imagination  not  as  yet 
governed  by  artistic  restraint ;  it  was  called  "  Tiger  Lilies," 
and  appeared  in  1867  when  he  was  but  twenty-six.  It  did 
not  win  success ;  indeed,  fiction  was  never  his  proper 
medium.  Meanwhile,  he  steadily  wrote  verse  and  sent  it 
to  the  magazines,  —  to  get  it  promptly  back  as  a  rule.  But 
here  and  there  an  unusually  canny  editor  recognized  the 
rare  worth  of  this  young  Southern  unknown,  and  at  least 
one  well-known  poet,  Bayard  Taylor,  stretched  forth  the 
friendly  hand  of  greeting.  The  publication  of  his  striking 
poem,  "  Corn,"  drew  sufficient  attention  to  him  to  result 
in  an  invitation  to  write  the  words  for  a  cantata  to  the 
music  of  Dudley  Buck,  to  be  sung  at  the  Philadelphia 
Centennial  Exhibition.  And  this  centennial  year  marks 
the  publication  of  the  first  edition  of  his  poems,  —  not  till 
he  was  dead  did  the  second  and  definitive  edition  appear. 
This  early  book  was  tentative,  and  by  no  means  fully  ex 
pressed  the  singer  who  was  to  be,  though  rich  promise  it 
had.  A  few  magazines  were  friendly,  —  Lippincotfs,  the 
Independent,  and  Scribner's,  —  but  at  the  best  the  financial 
rewards  of  fugitive  poem  selling  were  so  scant  that  the 
poet's  struggle  with  poverty  was  severe,  and  all  his  life 
he  was  under  this  harrow.  To  live  by  magazine  contribu 
tions  was  well-nigh  an  impossibility  then,  as  indeed  it  is 


300  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

now  to  any  save  the  fictionist.  Very  early  too,  in  1867, 
he  had  married  Mary  Day  of  Macon  and  soon  there  were 
other  mouths  to  feed  and  the  struggle  was  sterner.  So, 
Pegasus  put  on  harness ;  Lanier  did  hack  work,  yet  always 
work  of  meaning  and  beauty.  He  made  a  Florida  guide 
book  attractive,  and  edited  brave  old  literature  for  boys, 
like  Malory's  "  King  Arthur,"  the  Welsh  tales  known  as 
the  Mabinogian,  and  Bishop  Percy's  "  Reliques."  Lanier 
loved  the  quaint,  full-mouthed,  resonant  old  English,  and 
was  all  his  days  a  devout  student  of  the  bygone  literators, 
with  a  noteworthy  effect  upon  his  own  style,  and  he  loved 
quite  as  well  the  stalwart  ideals  of  the  English  past.  And 
so  he  presented  even  in  such  enforced  literary  labor  the 
rare  spectacle  of  a  poet-editor. 

In  1879  a  gleam  of  good  luck  came.  Music  had  been 
followed  (we  have  seen)  as  a  sister  muse.  In  1873  ne  nad 
gone  to  Baltimore  to  be  first  flute  in  the  Peabody  Orchestra 
of  that  city ;  his  scholarship,  high  character,  and  literary 
attainments  had  become  known  there  and,  in  consequence, 
in  1879,  he  was  appointed  to  a  lectureship  at  the  Johns 
Hopkins  University ;  assuring  him  the  first  steady  income 
(albeit  a  small  one)  of  a  strenuous  life.  Noble  work 
resulted  from  this  stimulus  :  two  books  of  great  value  and 
individuality,  the  remarkable  study  of  the  English  novel 
delivered  as  lectures  at  the  university  and  the  "  Science 
of  English  Verse,"  a  volume  recognized  by  scholars  in 
this  field  as  a  remarkable  contribution.  But  alas !  the 
respite  was  but  brief.  Just  as  the  sky  seemed  clearing, 
and  he  was  about  to  approach  the  zenith  of  his  work  and 
reward,  Lanier's  health,  all  along  precarious,  quite  failed ; 
he  traveled  with  his  devoted  wife  in  literal  search  for 
breath,  but  hemorrhage  prostrated  him,  until  in  the  autumn 


Lanier  301 

of  1 88 1,  in  the  mountains  of  North  Carolina,  the  noble 
soul  was  loosened  from  its  frail  tenement  of  flesh  :  — 

From  the  contagion  of  the  world's  slow  stain 
He  is  secure. 

To  hear  of  heroic  souls  like  Lanier  and  Stevenson  accom 
plishing  great  things  under  such  limitations  is  a  moral 
lesson  that  shames  all  cowardice  and  half-hearted  en 
deavor. 

Not  till  1884  did  the  full  edition  of  the  "  Poems  "  appear, 
with  the  appreciative  foreword  by  Dr.  Ward.  Slightly 
augmented  since,  it  now  contains  all  of  Lanier's  poetic 
output.  A  number  of  prose  books  have  been  given  to  the 
world  since  his  death  :  viz.,  his  "  Letters  "and  three  essay 
volumes,  "  Music  and  Poetry,"  "  Retrospects  and  Pros 
pects,"  and  so  late  as  1902,  "  Shakespeare  and  his  Fore 
runners."  One  who  would  understand  Lanier  both  in  his 
life  and  works  is  especially  directed  to  the  "  Letters." 
The  beautiful  nature  of  the  man  is  here  revealed,  and  his 
ideal  relations  to  the  gracious  and  noble  woman  whom  he 
called  wife.  Those  on  the  subject  of  music  written  to  her 
in  absence  which  are  to  be  found  in  this  volume,  are 
unique  not  only  in  their  wonderful  poetry  but  their  revela 
tion  of  a  devotion  that  seems  hardly  of  this  earth.  Had 
they  appeared  in  a  piece  of  romantic  fiction  they  would 
have  been  declared  untrue  to  life. 

But  in  spite  of  the  genuine  value  of  his  prose  contribu 
tion,  it  is  as  a  poet  that  Sidney  Lanier  is  chiefly  significant. 
His  characteristics  separate  him  from  other  makers  of 
literature.  His  work  possesses,  to  begin  with,  the  glow 
and  color  of  the  South  —  an  exuberance  and  rhythmic 
sweep,  which  to  the  sensitive  reader  are  wonderfully  stimu- 


302  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

/  lating.  Lanier  was  an  artist  of  words,  of  melodies  and 
poetic  forms.  For  mastery  of  the  niceties  of  verse,  for  the 
handling  of  rhyme  and  meter,  for  resources  of  tone  color 
and  music,  his  talent  was  conspicuous.  In  this  way  he 
broadened  and  enriched  the  technique  of  the  native  verse. 
He  was  both  musician  and  poet,  and  each  gift  helped  the 
other.  He  was  a  pioneer  in  ingenious  attempts  to  develop 
to  a  point  never  before  attained,  the  harmonic  possibilities 
of  English  poetry.  As  an  example  of  this,  his  Centennial 
cantata  with  its  marginal  musical  notations  will  serve. 
Again,  Lanier  was  that  rare  thing,  a  true  song  writer  —  as 
was  Burns  or  B£ranger  or  Tennyson.  Many  of  his  poems 
have  been  set  to  music,  always  a  severe  test  of  verse,  with 
the  most  felicitous  results.  Such  lovely  lyrics  as  the 
"  Song  of  the  Chattahoochee,"  the  "  Song  of  the  Future," 
"  A  Song  of  Love,"  and  an  "  Evening  Song  "  are  witnesses 
to  this  gift.  None  is  finer  than  the  "  Song  of  the  Chatta 
hoochee,"  which  may  here  be  quoted  as  a  piece  of  verse 
equally  remarkable  for  its  pure  singing  quality,  love  of 
nature,  and  characteristically  spiritual  implication  :  — 


SONG  OF  THE  CHATTAHOOCHEE 

Out  of  the  hills  of  Habersham, 
Down  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
I  hurry  amain  to  reach  the  plain, 
Run  the  rapid  and  leap  the  fall, 
Split  at  the  rock  and  together  again, 
Accept  my  bed,  or  narrow  or  wide, 
And  flee  from  folly  on  every  side 
With  a  lover's  pain  to  attain  the  plain 
Far  from  the  hills  of  Habersham, 
Far  from  the  valleys  of  Hall. 


Lanier  303 

All  down  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

All  through  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
The  rushes  cried  Abide,  abide, 
The  willful  waterweeds  held  me  thrall, 
The  laving  laurel  turned  my  tide, 
The  ferns  and  the  fondling  grass  said  Stay9 
The  dewberry  dipped  for  to  work  delay, 
And  the  little  reeds  sighed  Abide,  abide. 

Here  in  the  hills  of  Haber sham, 

Here  in  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

High  o'er  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Veiling  the  valleys  of  Hall, 
The  hickory  told  me  manifold 
Fair  tales  of  shade,  the  poplar  tall 
Wrought  me  her  shadowy  self  to  hold, 
The  chestnut,  the  oak,  the  walnut,  the  pine, 
Overleaning,  with  flickering  meaning  and  sign, 
Said,  Pass  not,  so  cold,  these  manifold 

Deep  shades  of  the  hills  of  Habershamy 

These  glades  in  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

And  oft  in  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

And  oft  in  the  valleys  of  Hall, 

The  white  quartz  shone,  and  the  smooth  brook -stone 
Did  bar  me  of  passage  with  friendly  brawl, 
And  many  a  luminous  jewel  lone 
—  Crystals  clear  or  a-cloud  with  mist, 
Ruby,  garnet,  and  amethyst  — 
Made  lures  with  the  lights  of  streaming  stone 

In  the  clefts  of  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

In  the  beds  of  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

But  oh,  not  the  hills  of  Habersham 

And  oh,  not  the  valleys  of  Hall 
Avail :  I  am  fain  for  to  water  the  plain. 
Downward  the  voices  of  Duty  call  — 
Downward,  to  toil  and  be  mixed  with  the  main, 


304  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

The  dry  fields  burn,  and  the  mills  are  to  turn, 
And  a  myriad  flowers  mortally  yearn, 
And  the  lordly  main  from  beyond  the  plain 

Calls  o'er  the  hills  of  Habersham, 

Calls  through  the  valleys  of  Hall. 

We  have  thus  far  borne  down  on  the  technical  accom 
plishment  of  Sidney  Lanier ;  but  technique  is  to  a  poet's 
rounded  achievement  only  the  scaffolding  for  the  completed 
structure.  Lanier  was  possessed  of  a  fine  culture,  he  had 
read  much  and  choicely,  his  thought  was  masterly  and  he 
was  endowed  with  a  sane  and  large  imagination.  He  was 
utterly  free  from  and  above  the  decking  out  in  the  fine 
robes  of  art  of  the  petty  conceits,  the  stale  themes,  and 
immasculate  prettifications  of  much  modern  verse.  He 
was  a  thinker,  one  who  spoke  wise  words  on  the  vital 
problems  of  his  day,  —  problems  of  state,  religion,  society, 
science,  art,  and  literature ;  often  he  was  an  intellectual 
pioneer  ahead  of  his  time.  And  with  this  mental  breadth 
and  grasp  went  a  profound  ethical  earnestness,  a  subtly 
pervasive  spirituality  which  make  this  poet  most  distinc 
tive.  He  believed  not  only  in  the  beauty  of  holiness,  but 
also  in  the  holiness  of  beauty.  He  divined  that  Beauty 
(as  Keats  knew)  is  in  the  last  analysis  a  spiritual  thing  ; 
that  the  true,  the  good,  and  the  beautiful  interplay  divinely 
into  each  other. 

These  three  qualities,  technical  mastery,  independent 
thought,  and  spiritual  perception  and  passion  are  the  head 
marks  of  his  best  poetry,  and  the  chief  of  this  trinity  of 
traits  is  the  message  of  the  spirit.  Certain  poems  that 
illustrate  this  may  be  given ;  and  first  that  which  is  of  all  he 
did  most  familiar,  "  The  Ballad  of  Trees  and  the  Master  " 
—  which  can  properly  be  called  a  perfect  poem  of  worship. 


Lanier  305 

A  BALLAD  OF  TREES  AND  THE  MASTER 

Into  the  woods  my  Master  went, 

Clean  forspent,  forspent. 

Into  the  woods  my  Master  came, 

Forspent  with  love  and  shame. 

But  the  olives  they  were  not  blind  to  Him, 

The  little  gray  leaves  were  kind  to  Him : 

The  thorn  tree  had  a  mind  to  Him 

When  into  the  woods  He  came. 

Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  went, 

And  He  was  well  content* 

Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  came, 

Content  with  death  and  shame. 

When  Death  and  shame  would  woo  Him  last, 

From  under  the  trees  they  drew  Him  last : 

Twas  on  a  tree  they  slew  Him  —  last 

When  out  of  the  woods  He  came. 

How  valiantly  soul  rises  above  failing  flesh  in  his  '•  The 
Stirrup  Cup,"  one  of  the  high-hearted  moods  of  the  man 
who  lectured  at  Johns  Hopkins  when  too  weak  to  stand  on 
the  platform  and  who,  his  wife  testifies,  wrote  the  last  of 
the  magnificent  "  Hymns  of  the  Marshes  "  when  he  was 
so  near  death  as  to  be  unable  to  lift  hand  to  mouth :  — 

THE   STIRRUP  CUP 

Death,  thou'rt  a  cordial  old  and  rare : 
Look  how  compounded,  with  what  care! 
Time  got  his  wrinkles  reaping  thee 
Sweet  herbs  from  all  antiquity. 

David  to  thy  distillage  went, 
Keats,  and  Gotama  excellent, 
Omar  Khayyam,  and  Chaucer  bright, 
And  Shakespeare  for  a  king-delight. 


306  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

Then,  Time,  let  not  a  drop  be  spilt : 
Hand  me  the  cup  whene'er  thou  wilt ; 
'Tis  thy  rich  stirrup  cup  to  me ; 
I'll  drink  it  down  right  smilingly. 

Poets  have  only  occasionally  sung  of  wifehood  in  a  lyric 
strain  as  pure  and  impassioned  as  those  more  familiar 
notes  which  tell  of  the  wooing  time.  Browning  did  this 
in  the  noble  "  One  Word  More  " ;  Lanier  did  it  in  the 
poem  "  My  Springs,"  whose  loveliness  must  go  home  to 
every  heart  that  responds  to  the  finer  human  kinships ; 
the  student  of  Lanier  should  not  overlook  it. 

In  a  poem  like  "Life  and  Song,"  with  its  haunting 
melody,  one  gets  a  glimpse  of  this  poet's  ideal  of  work  — 
almost  too  high  a  one,  it  would  seem,  for  human  nature's 
daily  food.  "  Let  my  name  perish,"  he  once  said  in  sub 
stance,  in  a  private  letter,  "  the  poetry  is  good  poetry,  and 
the  music  good  music,  and  the  heart  that  needs  it  will  find 
it."  And  it  may  honestly  be  said  of  Sidney  Lanier  that, 
given  the  shortcomings  of  our  mortal  nature,  no  artisthas 

come  nearer  to  the  aspirations  of  the  two  closing  lines'  of 

— s 

, 
LIFE  AND   SONG 

If  life  were  caught  by  a  clarionet, 
And  a  wild  heart,  throbbing  in  the  reed, 

Should  thrill  its  joy  and  trill  its  fret, 
And  utter  its  heart  in  every  deed, 

Then  would  this  breathing  clarionet 

Type  what  the  poet  fain  would  be ; 
For  none  o'  the  singers  ever  yet 

Has  wholly  lived  his  minstrelsy, 


Lamer  307 

Or  clearly  sung  his  true,  true  thought, 

Or  utterly  bodied  forth  his  life, 
Or  out  of  life  and  song  has  wrought 

The  perfect  one  of  man  and  wife ; 

Or  lived  and  sung,  that  Life  and  Song 

Might  each  express  the  other's  all, 
Careless  if  life  or  art  were  long, 

Since  both  were  one,  to  stand  or  fall : 

So  that  the  wonder  struck  the  crowd, 

Who  shouted  it  about  the  land : 
His  song  'was  only  living  aloud, 

His  work,  a  singing  with  his  hand! 

Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  much  of  his  very  finest 
work,  like  the  piece  just  quoted,  came  directly  from  the 
inspiration  of  his  beloved  music.  There  is  hardly  a  nobler 
thing  among  his  major  poems  than  that  called  the  "  Sym 
phony,"  as  every  lover  of  Lanier  well  knows.  Again  and 
again  is  this  influence  potent.  "  Music  is  love  in  search 
of  a  word,"  one  of  his  poems  declares,  and  one  of  the 
delights  in  reading  Lanier  is  to  feel  the  birth  of  that  divin- 
est  of  qualities  in  one's  heart,  and  to  be  floated  into  full 
communion  with  it  upon  a  concord  of  sweet  sounds. 

Another  winsome  aspect  of  his  genius  was  his  attitude 
toward  nature,  of  whom  he  was  a  fit  interpreter,  a  pas 
sionate  lover,  who  could  reveal  her  very  soul  so  well  as 
her  myriad  fair  externals  between  sky  and  sod.  He  felt 
God  in  everything ;  to  him  the  visible  universe  pulsated 
with  a  divine  presence ;  incidentally,  his  nature  poems 
are  full  of  entrancing  local  color  of  his  Southern  home. 
An  illustration  will  illuminate  this  statement. 


308  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

FROM   THE  FLATS 

What  heartache  —  ne'er  a  hill! 
Inexorable,  vapid,  vague,  and  chill 
The  drear  sand  levels  drain  my  spirit  low. 
With  one  poor  word  they  tell  me  all  they  know ; 
Whereat  their  stupid  tongues,  to  tease  my  pain, 
Do  drawl  it  o'er  again  and  o'er  again. 
They  hurt  my  heart  with  griefs  I  cannot  name : 

Always  the  same,  the  same. 

Nature  hath  no  surprise, 
No  ambuscade  of  beauty  'gainst  mine  eyes 
From  brake  or  lurking  dell  or  deep  defile ; 
No  humors,  frolic  forms  —  this  mile,  that  mile ; 
No  rich  reserves  or  happy-valley  hopes 
Beyond  the  bend  of  roads,  the  distant  slopes. 
Her  fancy  fails,  her  wild  is  all  run  tame : 

Ever  the  same,  the  same. 

Oh  might  I  through  these  tears 
But  glimpse  some  hill  my  Georgia  high  uprears, 
Where  white  the  quartz  and  pink  the  pebble  shine, 
The  hickory  heavenward  strives,  the  muscadine  \ 
Swings  o'er  the  slope,  the  oak's  far-falling  shade 
Darkens  the  dogwood  in  the  bottom  glade, 
And  down  the  hollow  from  a  ferny  nook 

Lull  sings  a  little  brook ! 

The  combination  of  Lanier's  art  and  spiritual  force  is 
found  in  the  "  Hymns  of  the  Marshes,"  two  of  which, 
"  Sunrise  "  and  "  The  Marshes  of  Glynn,"  are  magnifi 
cently  imaginative  organ  chants  of  a  dying  man  never  so 
strong  in  soul  as  when  he  hung  by  a  tenuous  thread  to  life. 
Yet  no  poetry  is  more  surgingly,  vibrantly  athrob  with  a 
splendid  vitality.  Its  production  under  the  conditions 


Lanier  309 

named  is  little  short  of  a  marvel.  We  cannot  give  it 
space  here,  but  earnestly  bespeak  a  reading  for  it. 

For  an  acquaintance  with  the  full  orbit  of  Sidney  La- 
nier's  nature,  such  thoughtful  poems  as  "  The  Crystal," 
"  Individuality,"  "  How  Love  Looked  for  Hell,"  "  Corn," 
"Psalm  of  the  West,"  "To  Richard  Wagner,"  and 
"Clover"  must  be  read,  for  they  will  serve  to  increase 
the  sense  of  how  largely  he  touched  life,  how  vigorous 
was  his  intellect.  As  one  reads  him  in  his  entirety,  one 
recognizes  that  in  the  full  tide  of  plethoric  utterance,  with 
so  much  to  say  and  so  piteously  little  time  to  say  it,  Lanier 
sometimes  sacrificed  lucidity.  His  fancy  now  and  then 
was  in  surplusage,  and  ran  into  decoration  and  arabesque, 
—  the  overflow  of  a  fertile  mind  and  imagination.  In  full 
maturity  doubtless  the  tendency  might  have  been  shaken 
off.  It  may  also  be  (as  some  critics  have  held)  that  he 
pushed  too  far  his  interesting  theory  of  the  close  interrela 
tions  of  music  and  verse,  believing  that  the  latter  had  not 
only  lyric  but  symphonic  powers. 

Had  Lanier  been  granted  longer  life,  he  would  have 
added  much  and  would  have  perfected  what  he  did  pro 
duce  with  the  instinct  of  the  ardent  artist.  But  he  did 
enough  to  reveal  a  rare,  beautiful  genius.  Half  complete 
as  is  his  poetical  work,  it  is  in  quality  and  influence  such 
as  to  associate  him  with  those  who  endure.  Once  more 
has  the  South  sent  forth  a  slender  son,  seemingly  a  strip 
ling  like  David,  who  has,  nevertheless,  overcome  in  Phi- 
listia,  and  lived  to  be  crowned  a  king  in  Israel 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  PRESENT  DAY 

IN  this  book  the  American  literary  leaders  chosen  for 
study  have  all  been  drawn  from  the  ranks  of  the  dead. 
Critics  of  literature  are  agreed  as  to  the  danger  of  dealing 
with  the  living,  whose  work  is  perhaps  still  incomplete ; 
with  whom  the  critic  may  have  personal  relations,  or  who 
are  not  far  enough  away  from  us  to  be  judged  in  the  proper 
perspective  and  with  the  judicial  calmness  of  Time.  The 
dozen  writers  we  have  considered  rest  from  their  labors 
and  their  works  do  follow  them ;  they  have  taken  what  is 
pretty  sure  to  be  a  firm,  final  place  in  American  literature. 
Moreover,  they  are  one  and  all  in  some  sort  representa 
tive. 

Yet  this  method  of  selecting  a  few  typical  figures  makes 
necessary  the  exclusion  of  many  writers  of  importance, 
past  and  present,  —  some  of  them  hardly  less  significant 
than  those  treated  herein ;  writers  who,  in  a  complete 
survey  of  our  attainment  of  letters,  would  come  in  for 
attention  such  as  has  been  given  them  in  numerous  excel 
lent  manuals.  To  supplement  the  present  volume  the 
condensed  studies  of  American  literature  by  such  scholars 
as  Professor  Brander  Matthews,  Professor  Katharine  Lee 
Bates,  Mr.  Julian  Hawthorne,  and  Professor  Walter  C. 
Bronson  will  be  found  most  helpful ;  while  for  a  fuller  and 

310 


The  Present  Day  311 

more  atmospheric  treatment,  that  by  Professor  Charles  F. 
Richardson  is  especially  recommended.  In  our  study,  the 
object  has  been  to  bear  down  on  the  dominant  things ;  as 
one's  eye  seeks  the  salient  features  of  a  landscape,  before 
trying  to  observe  details  and  appreciate  the  less  obvious 
attractions.  A  few  words  may  now  be  spoken  touching 
the  omissions  of  earlier  makers  of  literature  and  on  the 
present  situation. 

Names  in  the  past  clamor  for  mention.  Oratory,  for 
example,  has  furnished  mighty  men :  Patrick  Henry, 
Henry  Clay,  Randolph,  Calhoun,  and  the  giant  Web 
ster  ;  later,  Choate,  Everett,  Wendell  Phillips  and  pulpit 
speakers  like  Parker,  Beecher,  and  Storrs.  It  must  always 
be  remembered,  however,  that  oratory  is  a  kind  of  half- 
brother  to  literature,  since  even  the  great  effects  of  a 
Daniel  Webster  are  so  much  dependent  upon  voice,  pres 
ence,  personal  magnetism,  that  the  magic  is  lost  when  one 
turns  to  the  cold  replica  of  the  printed  page.  In  thinking 
of  the  Concord  group,  too,  one  feels  that  our  literature 
would  have  been  poorer  indeed  without  the  essays  of 
Thoreau,  quaint  hermit  friend  of  Emerson,  original  both 
in  mind  and  manner:  that  rare  phenomenon,  a  genuine 
essayist.  And  there  are  later  essayists  of  charm  and 
distinction :  "  Ik  Marvel "  (Donald  G.  Mitchell),  George 
William  Curtis,  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  rush  to  the  mind, 
all  save  Mitchell  now  gone ;  while  of  the  living,  sturdy 
John  Burroughs  stands  at  the  head  of  a  group  of  nature 
writers  who  have  made  themselves  welcome  for  wholesome 
attraction  of  theme  and  pleasantness  of  presentation.  The 
essay,  critical  and  creative,  is  by  no  means  dead,  and  is 
likely  to  gain  in  authority  and  acceptance  when  the  now 
prevalent  autocracy  of  fiction  is  past.  One  living  writer 


3 12  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

of  indisputable  genius  stands  halfway  between  fiction  and 
the  essay,  hard  to  catalogue,  so  unique  is  he  :  Mark  Twain, 
whose  place  in  the  popular  heart  is  of  the  household  kind ; 
whose  work,  when  it  is  looked  back  upon  in  its  entirety, 
will  be  recognized  as  that  of  a  humorist  in  the  large  mean 
ing  of  the  word,  an  essentially  serious-minded  man  who 
really  preaches  and  teaches  while  we  laugh.  And  writers 
of  history  we  have  had  whose  work  is  literature  ;  Prescott, 
Ticknor,  Motley,  Parkman,  —  the  list  might  easily  be 
augmented. 

As  to  poetry,  it  will  be  well,  while  conceding  that  the 
first  creative  burst  from  the  elder  bards  has  subsided, 
not  to  overlook  the  good  work  that  is  still  being  done. 
The  average  of  verse  technique  is  higher  than  it  was  fifty 
years  ago  ;  and  there  are  so  many  aspirants  for  favor  that 
it  is  relatively  harder  for  one  voice  to  be  distinguished  in 
the  general  chorus.  Some  who  now  seem  minor  may  later 
be  recognized  as  of  real  importance.  With  greater  atten 
tion  to  form,  there  has  been  a  loss  in  vital  subjects  ;  natural 
enough,  perhaps,  although  the  settling  of  new  states,  the 
extension  by  war  and  "  benevolent  assimilation  "  of  foreign 
territory,  the  great  capitalist  ventures  and  labor  throes 
and  the  deeper  realization  of  the  tremendous  scope  and 
significance  of  the  American  idea,  would  seem  to  suggest 
no  lack  of  themes.  The  very  complexities  of  our  mighty 
civilization,  with  its  cosmopolitanism  and  material  miracles, 
may  possibly  stagger  the  poet,  for  the  very  reason  that 
there  is  so  much  to  interpret :  it  is  a  case  of  embarrass 
ment  of  riches.  Singers  of  deserved  reputation  are  still 
living:  the  veteran  lyrist  R.  H.  Stoddard,  Stedman,  cul 
tured  and  thoughtful  in  verse  as  he  is  in  criticism  one  of 
our  foremost  students,  and  Aldrich,  an  artist  in  his  exqui- 


The  Present  Day  313 

site  finish  and  in  his  earlier  work  by  no  means  wanting  in 
vibrant  humanity ;  and  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  whose 
"  Battle  Hymn  "  still  makes  the  blood  beat  and  the  feet 
keep  time.  Now  and  again  poets  like  Emily  Dickinson 
and  Edward  Sill  have  come  and  gone  before  we  were  fully  « 
aware  how  rare  was  their  spirit.  Bayard  Taylor's  impor 
tance  was  such  as  to  give  him  a  chapter  to  himself  in  Mr. 
Stedman's  study  of  our  native  singers.  The  temptation  to 
add  almost  indefinitely  to  the  list  of  capable  lyric  poets, 
both  living  and  dead,  must  be  sternly  resisted.  Nature 
has  been  worthily  depicted  in  the  late  lyric  work  of  a  group 
of  Canadians  headed  by  Bliss  Carman,  and  no  phase  of 
present  verse  work  is  more  conspicuous  than  this  of 
the  reverent  and  rapturous  appreciation  of  nature.  The 
homely  life  of  common  humanity  (if  any  humanity  can 
rightly  be  called  common)  has  been  interpreted  with  truth 
and  pathos  by  a  band  of  dialect  poets  of  whom  Riley  is 
easily  first.  Nor  are  signs  wanting  that  our  poets  are 
likely  in  the  near  future  to  essay  more  sustained  work  in 
narrative  and  dramatic  verse,  encouraged  thereto  by  the 
very  evident  tendency  to  rehabilitate  the  literary  drama. 

By  far  the  most  significant  literary  movement  of  this 
generation  in  the  United  States  (as  indeed  wherever  lit 
erature  is  cultured)  has  been  that  of  the  development  of 
prose  fiction.  This  modern  form,  for  better  or  worse,  has 
come  to  occupy  a  tyrannous  central  position,  well-nigh  to 
the  crushing  out  of  elder  forms  like  poetry,  the  essay  and 
drama,  in  the  general  regard.  Fiction  appeals  to  the 
widest  audience  (the  play  is  an  exception,  but  as  yet  we 
hardly  have  a  literary  drama  in  this  country),  simply 
because  it  is  most  easily  understood  by  the  people,  the 
most  democratic  of  literary  molds  in  that  it  can  best 


314  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

/  receive  the  impress  of  the  very  form  and  image  of  our 
time.  It  surveys  classes  and  masses  alike ;  every  state, 
section,  even  village,  has  its  novelist ;  within  the  pages  of 
the  story  all  humanity  jostles  and  hobnobs.  The  service 
thus  done  by  fiction  in  teaching  the  different  parts  of  the 
land  to  know  each  other  and  so  to  realize  the  variety  and 
vastitude  of  our  national  life,  is  likely  to  be  underesti 
mated  rather  than  the  reverse.  The  novel,  in  this 
thought,  is  a  mighty  civilizer,  drawing  men  together  as  do 
the  wonderful  material  uses  of  electricity,  and  for  the 
higher  purposes  of  a  comprehensive  sympathy  and  love. 
In  the  United  States  since  1860,  there  has  been  a 
remarkable  growth  and  perfecting  of  the  novel  of  real  life 
—  realistic  fiction,  in  the  critical  phrase.  In  the  middle 
century,  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  besides  writing  in  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  "  an  epoch-making  book,  vital  in  power, 
whatever  its  defects  and  prejudices,  initiated  in  her  other 
stories  a  faithful  first-hand  study  of  homely  New  England 
character,  which  has  been  fruitfully  developed  by  an  able 
band  of  later-day  followers  with  Miss  Wilkins  and  Miss 
Jewett  at  their  head.  The  names  throng  here  and  can 
not  be  enumerated.  Two  leaders,  however,  must  have 
special  mention :  Howells  and  James,  for  they,  more  than 
any  others,  started  the  present-day  school.  Mr.  James, 
whose  earlier  and  better  work  dealt  with  American  condi 
tions,  often  in  their  European  aspects,  has  of  late  years 
lived  abroad  and  written  of  life  there,  meanwhile  deteri 
orating  both  in  the  breadth  and  clarity  of  his  art.  But 
Mr.  Howells  has  steadily  produced  a  series  of  fictional 
studies  which  the  future  social  historian  is  likely  to  rec 
ognize  as  the  most  comprehensive  and  truthful  survey  of 
certain  sections  of  Eastern  life  —  especially  that  in  cities 


The  Present  Day  315 

—  ever  made  by  an  American  novelist.  And  some  two- 
score  younger  writers,  both  men  and  women,  might  be 
enrolled  as  using  the  method  and  having  the  aim  of  this 
leader. 

In  the  Far  West,  a  pioneer  like  Bret  Harte  began  that 
exploitation  of  the  more  picturesque  types  and  incidents  / 
of  a  newer  phase  of  our  civilization  which  has  spread 
throughout  the  land ;  California  itself  in  so  recent  a  man 
as  the  late  Frank  Norris  lending  itself  once  more  to  a 
masterful  delineation. 

The  Middle  West  and  the  Southwest,  with  all  they  stand 
for  in  difference  of  material  conditions,  nationality  of 
the  settlers,  and  physical  environment,  have  been  and  are 
being  displayed  by  able  fiction  makers ;  writers  like 
Eggleston,  Wallace,  Wister,  Garland,  Fuller,  Tarkington, 
Thanet,  White,  are  but  a  few  of  many.  The  prevailing 
temper  in  these  sections  of  the  country,  as  exhibited  in 
fiction,  is  that  of  a  strong,  cheery  optimism,  along  with  an 
insistence  on  the  facts  —  sometimes  carrying  the  author 
into  grimness  and  sadness.  The  fiction  of  the  \Vest  as  a 
whole  may  be  described  as  wholesomely  realistic.  In  the 
South,  which  has  been  revealed  of  late  in  novel  and  short 
story  by  a  group  of  gifted  writers  who  have  infused  a  most 
welcome  vitality  into  our  latter-day  creative  writing,  the 
tone  is  more  romantic.  This  may  be  explained  perhaps 
by  the  environment,  the  picturesque  conditions  both 
human  and  physiographic  of  that  part  of  the  land.  Page, 
Stuart,  Harris,  Lane  Allen,  Murfree,  Fox,  are  but  a  few 
of  the  names  that  naturally  are  suggested,  where  others 
are  as  deserving  of  mention.  So  steady  and  interesting  is 
the  production  in  all  parts  of  the  United  States,  that  one 
is  overwhelmed  in  the  attempt  even  to  keep  up  with  it, 


316  Literary  Leaders  of  America 

to  say  nothing  of  its  classification.  A  surprising  amount 
of  it  is  really  good  work,  and  that  all  this  activity  will 
leave  a  residuum  of  worthy  fiction  illustrative  of  the  newer 
America,  no  student  can  doubt.  In  all  this  recent  work 
nothing  is  more  noteworthy  than  the  prominence  of  women 
writers,  who  now  compete  on  even  terms  with  men  and 
often  win  the  coveted  prizes.  The  day  when,  to  Jane 
Austen,  the  writing  of  novels  seemed  of  dubious  gentility, 
has  long  since  passed  away. 

What  is  the  present  literary  center  of  the  United  States  ? 
Beyond  question,  commercially,  it  is  New  York,  which 
has  become  the  natural  headquarters  as  a  mart  where 
literary  folk  may  dispose  of  their  wares.  Early  in  the 
nineteenth  century  the  Knickerbocker  School  of  writers 
gave  the  metropolis  a  fair  literary  fame ;  still  earlier, 
Philadelphia  had  some  such  claim.  Then  Boston  and 
its  vicinity  became  a  worthy  center ;  now,  although  there 
is  still  much  of  literary  atmosphere  and  influence  in  the 
Massachusetts  city,  New  York,  in  the  fullness  of  time, 
seems  to  have  its  revenge.  But  looking  ahead,  one  may 
/  see  that  the  line  of  literary  demarcation  is  likely  to  be 
.  pushed  westward ;  a  generation  hence  a  majority  of  the 
representative  writers  may  come  from  beyond  the  Missis 
sippi.  No  one  city  or  locality  can  long  hold  literary  pre 
eminence  in  a  country  like  ours,  of  rapid  radiation  and 
shifting  interests.  We  are  more  likely  to  have  several 
centers  than  one  of  any  permanence.  But  so  long  as  this 
desectionalizing  of  literature  makes  for  a  truer,  firmer 
Americanism,  all  will  be  well. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  student  who  becomes  interested  in  the  dozen  great  writers 
discussed  in  this  volume  may  supplement  his  study  by  reference 
to  some  book  in  which  the  national  literary  development  is 
sketched  with  more  of  fulness  and  detail,  and  many  writers 
merely  mentioned  herein,  or  omitted  altogether,  are  described. 
The  following,  carefully  chosen  from  a  considerable  list,  may  be 
recommended :  — 

"  The  New  England  Poets,"  by  Prof.  W.  C.  Lawton  (Macmil- 
lan) .  This  is  a  study  of  six  native  poets,  —  Emerson,  Hawthorne, 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Holmes,  and  Lowell. 

"American  Literature"  (1607-1885),  by  Prof.  C.  F.  Richard 
son  (Putnam). 

"  A  Readers1  Handbook  of  American  Literature,"  by  Col.  T.  W. 
Higginson  and  H.  W.  Boynton  (Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.). 

"  American  Literature,"  by  Prof.  W.  P.  Trent,  in  the  "  Litera 
ture  of  the  World  "  series  (Scribner) . 

"  America  in  Literature/'  by  Prof.  Geo.  E.  Woodberry  (Harper). 

"  American  Literature,"  by  Prof.  Brander  Matthews  (Appleton). 

"Literary  History  of  America,"  by  Prof.  Barrett  Wendell 
(Scribner). 

"Chronological  Outlines  of  American  Literature,"  by  S.  L. 
Whitcomb  (Macmillan).  This  will  be  found  very  helpful  in  the 
way  of  assisting  to  an  understanding  of  contemporaneous  his 
torical  events  in  connection  with  the  literary  production. 

"Poets  of  America,1'  by  E.  C.  Stedman  (Houghton,  Mifflin  & 
Co.).  This  is  the  best  book  on  the  development  of  our  native 
song. 

The  student  who  wishes  fuller  description  of  the  American 
literary  masters  is  referred  to  "  The  American  Men  of  Letters " 

317 


3 1 8  Bibliography 

series  (Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.)?  in  which  appear,  besides  those 
not  studied  in  this  book,  the  lives  of  Cooper,  Emerson,  Poe, 
Bryant,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  and  Whittier;  while  those  of 
Lowell  and  Holmes  are  in  preparation. 

A  sympathetic  life  and  study  of  Whitman  is  that  by  John  Bur 
roughs  (Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.).  The  sketch  of  Lanier  by 
Dr.  J.  H.  Ward,  introductory  to  the  volume  of  his  poems  (Scrib- 
ner),  is  admirable. 

The  student  who  desires  further  selections  from  the  works  of 
standard  authors,  as  well  as  examples  of  the  writings  of  American 
authors  of  repute,  may  be  referred  to  "  The  Library  of  American 
Literature"  (1608-1889),  edited  by  E.  C.  Stedman  and  E.  M. 
Hutchinson,  in  ten  volumes. 

From  the  large  number  of  books  which  throw  sidelights  upon 
American  authors,  in  the  way  of  reminiscence,  anecdotes,  and 
personal  testimony,  and  thus  make  the  subject  more  familiar  and 
delightful,  these  may  be  especially  recommended  :  — 

"American  Book  Men,"  by  M.  A.  DeWolfe  Howe  (Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.). 

"Authors  and  Friends,"  by  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields  (Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.). 

"  Cheerful  Yesterdays,"  by  Col.  T.  W.  Higginson  (Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.). 

"Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintances,"  by  W.  D.  Howells 
(Harper). 

"Reminiscences,"  by  Julia  Ward  Howe  (Houghton,  Mifflin 
&  Co.). 

"  Recollections  of  Eminent  Men,"  by  E.  P.  Whipple  (Hough- 
ton,  Mifflin  &  Co.). 

The  student  is  urged  in  his  study  of  American  literature  to 
read  representative  examples  of  the  authors  of  standing  whenever 
possible,  and  to  make  a  point  of  reading  a  given  art  work  as  a 
whole,  whether  it  be  poem,  essay,  fiction,  or  drama.  It  is  better 
to  get  a  first-hand  acquaintance  with  an  author  than  to  put  more 
time  on  criticism  about  him  and  never  come  to  a  taste  of  his 
quality  itself. 


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